Another Day In The Corps
by JonasGrant
Summary: Koprulu sector is a brutal place and anyone living in it has a story to tell, be it Marines, ship captains or Ghosts, there is no such thing a routine in these people's lives. This story follows Henry Navarro-Jackson and many others as they fight for what they believe in, be it duty, truth or sheer psychotic fun.
1. Stop, Drop and Roll

'Fresh Meat' had been stenciled on the boy's chest plate, just under the curve of his visor.

That's just what he was; fresh off the meat factory, another cookie-cut piece of venison to be thrown away alongside hundreds of others.

Private Henry Navarro-Jackson sat at the back of the dominion dropship alongside seven identical marines in red armor, carrying the same run-of-the mill C-14 Impalers, no customization whatsoever distinguished one soldier from the other, except the name tags under their visors.

Just like Jackson, each of them was fresh out of training, or whatever hypno-bullshit they called training now. All of them, however, had also undergone resocialization, something he had not been put through. Volunteers were a rare and precious thing in the Dominion.

Given the pay rate and the risks, that made perfect sense, but Jackson didn't really care about money… Well, he did like having a lot of it, but the truth of the matter is that he was… Let's say, untalented, in everything he undertook, bad at school, too lazy to prospect, not brave enough to be a criminal... His list of failure went on from his sixteenth to his twenty-second birthday, when he decided military life might just be his way out of poverty.

So far, he'd been taught how to speak like a soldier, how to walk in power armor, on which side of an officer to walk, when he should and shouldn't salute and how to respond a direct order.

One such direct order was issued before the dropship even left the battlecruiser: "You there, private," A sergeant with his visor closed spoke through his suit's speaker, from the seat opposite his, "as soon as we're planetside, I want you to break formation and find out who's calling the shot, then you report to me…" the speakers relayed a deep breathing sound, followed by a breath of relief. The man apparently smoked a cigar in there.

"Coms are a cluster-fuck already…" That probably wasn't meant to be heard and it made Henry feel even worse than he already was.

Char held very little charm on its own, and now that it had claimed three battlecruisers in a single hour of battle, it was downright pants-shittingly terrifying. What the fuck could kill three cruisers in a row and remain standing? More importantly, what the fuck could a handful of marines do to hurt that thing?

"Fresh Meat…" A brain panned trooper spoke, only to be interrupted by the sudden jolt as their transport rocketed out of the cruiser, keeping its cargo in zero gravity for half a minute before entering the atmosphere.

Since they were pretty much free falling, the marines felt no gravity even though they were being pulled down by the planetary body, what they did feel was turbulence, one of many things nobody had told them about in training.

The same marine grabbed his safety harness in terror and called for his momma, the speakers amplifying his screams throughout the troop bay.

"Suck it up, marine!" The sergeant was quite displeased with his man, "This is a smooth ride compared to Tarsonis, so man up and keep your shit together!"

Though he was not screaming for his mother, Henry himself felt something like ice trickling down his back, his ears, fingers and nose were itching and cold while his whole body burned and his stomach churned. If that isn't utter panic, then Jackson had yet to experience it.

He clutched his C-14 tighter, the powered fingers groaning against reinforced metal. This was the fourth wave to be sent down to the surface, the previous three, deployed using drop pods, had already set up a landing zone, which meant Henry and his squad of resocs were riding first class in comparison.

The shaking eventually died down and whatever the other marine had intended to say, he'd forgotten about it somewhere between calling his mama and soiling himself. Red lights all over the ship turned green and every safety harness rose off its passenger. As one man, the marines rose and turned to face the ramp and Henry ended up next to last in line, just behind the sarge.

An hellish red glow filtered in from the crack as the ramp lowered and splashed across the equally red armors worn by Henry's squad mates. This whole place looked like a damaged TV screen with the wrong color filters.

Four marines managed to leave the dropship before the Zerg overwhelmed the landing zone. Perdition turrets grew quiet, gunfire died down and, for a few seconds, everything was calm, outside the clanking of boots on metal.

Then the Zerg reached the dropship and melted down on Henry's squad like flies on sugar.

From inside the troop bay, Jackson could see the wave of zergling tearing through CMC armors and flesh, but could do nothing about it without risking friendly fire.

"Hit the dirt!" The sergeant roared at the trooper ahead of him, himself dropping to a knee, establishing a three levelled firing line.

It took Jackson a second to realize he was the top of that line and when he opened up with his C-14, the other two had already bagged four Zerglings.

He fired two bursts, missing both times, before switching the Impaler's selector to full auto. Then, the fun began.

Erosion, that is the only word that can adequately describe what happened to the Zerg lines as a result of the three marine's superposed suppressive fire, the tide of limbs and claws being forced back by kinetic force alone. The fourth marine, another cookie cut gun fodder, opened fire as well, but towards the cockpit, through which more Zerg were making their way.

The pilot somehow managed to shove herself out of the seat and away from the claws fast enough to lean back on the marine's boot and fire her sidearm into the snarling mass outside.

"Reloading!" Henry had been the last to open fire, but ended up being first to reload, something the sergeant was quick to catch up on:

"Quit pissing ammo, marine! It's aim and shoot, not the other way around!"

With a fresh magazine engaged, Jackson was ready to resume spraying just as the NCO finished his sentence, but, as suddenly as it had started, the assault ended, replaced only with silence and a chorus of smoking U-238 cases rolling around on the floor.

"The hell? They just give up?" The marine on the floor sounded dubious.

"Maybe we got them all…" Said the one at the rear, not believing it himself.

The sarge pushed himself up and brought the private along, "Well let's find out," he shouted, his words slurred somewhat thanks to the cigar he held in his mouth, "I want a perimeter set up around this bird ten minutes ago, go go go!"

Stepping aside, he shoved both marines and the pilot forward, hurrying them forward as they stomped out into the open. Henry ended up kneeling to the ramp's left, sweeping the ravaged defences for movement.

Sandbags, barbed wires and concrete slabs laid strewn all over the place, chewed by teeth and acid. Automated turrets still beeped despite having been gutted, knocked down and trampled, but still, the debris rose half a meter higher than a man, hiding anything beyond the thirty meters wide landing zone.

Fixed gun emplacements remained mostly intact, their twin gatling guns kept spinning by severed hands and lifeless corpses. Out of ammo.

One could consider the lifeless part to be redundant, but with the Zerg, lively corpses were not that rare a sight.

The sarge took a marine with him and promptly checked the area behind the dropship. "All clear!" He called a second later, quickly echoed by Henry's teammate and the pilot, covering the front.

Unsure what to do now, and seeing as the sergeant was equally confused, Jackson made his way to the nearest gun emplacement, located on top of a low platform, just high enough to give a good view of the Firebase this landing zone should have been attached to.

Most of the place had been trashed, so that one could not differentiate whether the debris littering the floor belonged to an SCV, the barracks or a Thor walker… Pipes and neo-steel plates practically littered the ground.

"Contact! Contact!" Jackson spun on the spot in time to see an Hydralisk pop from the ground like a daisy, a mere meter from the ramp, to slice that same marine who'd called for his mother during the drop.

Both the man's arms fell to the floor and he stumbled back, screaming incoherently. This time, Jackson was the first to open fire and he pinned the alien to the side of the dropship with the first burst. That would have done the trick, but to his panicked mind, the monster remained a threat so long as it remained standing, so he fired another volley, which pinned the Zerg's arm to its face in a necrotic face-palm.

Jackson would have kept on shooting, but more Zerg were popping up and he had to focus on them instead.

Something jumped onto his platform and he nearly shot it before realizing it was only the pilot, panicked but alive and still firing her slug thrower as though it would make a difference.

The Zerg tried to follow, but most of them were base breeds, Zerglings, leftovers from the force that had ravaged the firebase. Henry took them out with relative ease, as did the sarge on the opposite side of their dropship, judging by the swearing and gunfire.

"Oh man," Spoke the pilot, mostly to herself, "we're actually winning this!"

To Jackson, however, they weren't winning anything, the only reason they were still alive was that the Zerg didn't really care about this place anymore, they couldn't have cared less about a handful of stragglers late to the party.

They'd lost over half their forces and to an enemy that wasn't actively trying to kill them, fucking insulting.

A Zergling, coming in from the base's ruins, managed to drag itself up and take a good bite at Henry's boots. A shiver of horror seared through the young marine's spine as the thing tried to knock him off balance, tugging and growling at his armored leg, but the man recovered before that could happen and put two rounds in the Zerg's back, blowing massive chunks out of its torso.

Ahead, only three of the small bastards remained, hopping towards them at full speed. An automatic burst ended the charge quickly.

"Everyone, report in!" The sarge had indeed survived the onslaught.

"Right behind you, sir." The last remaining brain panned marine spoke, earning himself an audible smack on the helmet.

"Heller, all clear."

"Jackson, zero movement."

The sergeant waited a few seconds, then sighed, "Alright, ladies, let's sort out this mess. Jackson, you stay right where you are, keep an eye out, Heller, see if the bird can still fly, Coldmann, you're with me, we're sweeping the area for supplies and survivors… What are ya'll waiting for?! Move it!"


	2. Jacked Up and Good to Go

**A/N: Thanks for the reviews, guys, don't worry, there's more coming :D**

The CMC suit kept a count of how many Zerg Jackson killed, but that count would reset as soon as he powered his suit down, something he'd have to do in an hour to let it recharge, so he decided to use a severed 'ling claw to carve a kill count on his left gauntlet. He of course kept an eye on the suit's motion tracker for the whole fifteen seconds of inattention.

He had just finished the eighteenth carving when Heller yelped from her ship.

"Everything okay in there, chief?" He called, stowing the claw in a waist ammo pouch.

The pilot walked out from the frontal ramp, cursing as she went. "Fekking Zerg completely trashed the console! This thing isn't going anywhere."

"Fuck." Muttered Henry before reporting the situation to his superior.

The Sarge seemed to agree with his tactical assertion, "Shit." To some extent.

But a Non-com has to set an example and he quickly caught himself, "I've found some ammo for those gun emplacements, Coldmann is bringing it over. Anything else?"

He asked Heller, who shook her head before ducking back into the ship.

"That's a negative, sir, all clear here."

He glanced about ten meters to the left, where a magma pit boiled and bubbled. All clear and he could still end up deed fried alive in his armor. Goddamned shithole.

A loud bang on the platform, a step behind him, caused the marine to spin on the spot, Impaler at the ready and finger on the trigger, but it was just Coldmann, bringing two massive ammunition boxes for the twin Gatling guns mounted in the center of the platform.

"Oi, any clue how to use these puppies?"

Jackson shrugged and dragged both boxes over to the guns. Similar X marked containers were attached underneath them and they came out easily when he tugged them backward. He inserted the fresh magazines and looked around for a loading mechanism.

All that time, the other marine remained motionless, halfway up the ladder, eyes lost in the distance.

The guns were auto-loaded, a single push of a button and they were both ready to fire.

Henry tried the swivel: all good.

"Sarge, Jackson, turret is locked and loaded."

"Copy that, kiddo, I've got some good news, coming back now."

Henry then turned back to Coldmann, who was now looking directly at him.

"What?"

"There was something on your back just now…"

He turned his head, twisting inside the bulky suit to survey his rear. Sure, his vision remained limited, but there clearly was nothing hitching a ride back there.

Coldmann lowered his visor without a word and climbed back down, as if nothing had happened.

Jackson kept trying to find whatever could have been on his back until the sarge arrived on the platform.

"All clear?"

He hadn't checked the perimeter since Coldmann had climbed down, a few minutes ago, but instinctively answered "Yes, sir!"

The motion sensor confirmed that, and so did a quick look around. The Zerg had no reason to waste any more troops on three marines and a pilot without a ship. They'd moved on.

"So, what's that good new, sir?"

The sarge raised his visor to spit out the stump of a cigar, replacing it with a fresh one he hurried to light. Every marine's kit contained survival lighters, plasma based little devices that would never run out of charge, but the sarge used a wooden match instead and that puzzled the private some, though he kept any question to himself.

"Found a scouting report, here, take a look." Uncertain, Henry took the delicate data slate in his massive hands and surveyed its content over the bottom of his visor. Damn suit had been built for large, bulky men, not scrawny city boys.

Still, he just had to hold the slate a bit higher than he would have without his armor. Small, dumb things like that were what took the longest getting used to.

The report came from Raynor's boys, Spectres, whatever that might be, they found a Nydus network two kliks south and were on their way to grab some explosives about half an hour before the attack. They'd be there any minute now.

"We just need to sit tight and wait for them to get here, then we'll radio for evac and redeployment."

It all made perfect sense, except for one part: "Why not just call for evac right away? Or reinforcement at least…"

The NCO's face stiffened at that and he chewed harder on his cigar, "There's no backup, kid, we're it, everything we have is already out there shoulder deep in Zerg guts." He took a long drag of smoke and blew it out his nose, repeating the gesture twice before resuming his speech, "Sure I could ask for help and they'd probably come running, but they'd have to cut through enemy lines and then they're sure to lose more than just four grunts."

Though he understood the reasoning, Jackson could also have pointed a number of flaws, such as 'why call in when the Spectres get here then?' and 'Shouldn't we at least warn someone?', but that would have incited a longer debate and most likely ended up as a waste of time and energy, so he just shut up and resumed his watch, which the sergeant interpreted as a victory.

A blinking icon warned Henry his suit would soon be out of juice. Higher level CMC armors could last for days, but his was the lowest quality available and lasted only three hours on a full charge. Two hours of sitting around in the cruiser, half an hour of standing around on the planet, that left him with only twenty-seven minutes of juice.

"Hey, Heller!"

The pilot leaned out of her dropship half a minute after hearing her name, "Yeah, what is it?" Clearly, she was in no mood for idle chat.

"Think I could use the ship's battery to juice up my suit?"

She frowned, almost angrily, and ducked back inside.

Jackson gave her the time of a careful sweep and went back to the edge of his platform.

"Heller?" Almost a full minute had passed and she still hadn't said a thing, "Hello?"

Still nothing. He was about to come down to check on her when she walked down the ramp, cursing just like last time.

"What's…"

"Fekking Zerg shit all over the battery, melted the thing down but good."

Henry had seen some intel reports about medevac dropships, solid pieces of hardware, twin vespene-based engines and a lithium battery located deep inside the superstructure to keep the vehicle airborne at most five minutes should it run out of vespene gas.

The Zerg had forced their way through the cockpit, but otherwise left the ship untouched, and the battery was located just between the jet engines, almost on the opposite side of the ship…

The bugs somehow knew that hitting this specific area would cripple the soldiers even further. Smart fuckers…

He reported the issue to his NCO, who actually laughed at that, "Son, back in the confederacy, we had no fancy power armor, we had rocks for ranged engagement, scissors for close encounters and paper as armor, so quit your whining and find yourself en environmental suit in the heal bus… Coldmann, you're on watch!"

…Right. Years ago, on a trip to Tarsonis, Henry had bought a T-shirt bearing the slogan 'I'm With Stupid'. Given the fact he was the only member of the squad who had not undergone resocialization, it seemed such a T-shirt would have been appropriate right now.

Instead of searching the dropship, Jackson went straight to the damaged perdition turrets. The things kept on beeping, though they had been twisted and ripped to shreds. Two out of ten did, anyway.

That meant they still had power and if he could find the power cable and jack it in his NOM adapter, everything would be right as rain…

"God, I hope it doesn't start raining while I'm jacked in." he mused, using his gun's bayonet to sever every bit of exposed rubber he could see. Eventually, one emitted a bright flash, a thick, nylon backed power cable with four rods on the inside. Jackson carefully stripped the nylon and rubber from around the thumb-thick metal wire and jacked all four into the slot, under his armpit.

The flashing icon bitched two more times before vanishing for good. The power levels kept on rising up to seventy percent, where they stabilised before decreasing slowly.

The other turret stopped beeping the moment Jackson pulled the other from his armor. Both had apparently been plugged to the same power source. Lazy engineers.


	3. Semper Fidelis

**A/N: Izwan: Not really a cliffhanger, I just cut it short**...

**I'll try not to touch stuff that will clash with HotS, but story-telling prevails over canon here, if I write something and it's made AU by HotS (Which I didn't play yet, because it's not out yet, so if you're in a coutry where it is or you're a pirate scum, revealing any spoilers in my review section with cause me to hate your face until the end of time... Where was I? Oh, yeah, I'll try no to make this AU, but if it ends up being, so be it.**

Looking back to the sergeant, up on the platform, twenty meters to the left, Henry silently wondered if he wouldn't be better off on his own, instead of taking orders from some brainwashed meatsack in a suit.

Though he certainly wasn't officer material, Jackson had been described by the Corps' psychologists as being held back only by motivation and self-esteem issues. Which, in a way, meant he had the tools he needed to succeed here… If only there was time for him to work out a lifetime worth of quirks and mental issues.

The marine scoffed inside his helmet and blinked up a com with the sarge. "Orders, sir?

-Go sit in the bird," the NCO replied, stopping to suck on his cigar, "switch your suit to sleep mode and await further instructions."

Great, put on standby like some god damned video game character. Just hang around 'till we need you…

Coldmann soon switched places with the sergeant, who immediately set to recovering dog tags from downed marines, along with ammunition and power packs.

Zerg corpses littered the ground, covering already red armors with even more crimson and making it hard for the marine to walk around. A clean path extended from the troop bay, where Impaler fire had eroded the zerg forces.

It looked like a grotesque honor guard, escorting Jackson on his way into the poorly lit bay. He couldn't recall when the green light had gone out. Was it after the ramp had lowered? Diring the second wave, or when the Zerg had begun digging through the cockpit?

Heller was already there, inventorying whatever gear her bird carried. Five AGR-14s, downsized gauss rifles with three magazines each, a Flak pistol, a needle gun, a flare gun, six AGMG-11s, even smaller than the AGRs, and a handful of cylindrical hand grenades, big enough to be used by a suited up marine, though Henry certainly didn't have the dexterity to pull a pin yet.

He squeezed the suit's ample butt in a seat and powered off systems one at a time. Heller paid him no mind and he ignored her too.

He did not power everything down, however, as he might have to jump back in action quickly. Instead, he opted to read. Not some novel or essay, most were propaganda anyway, he instead read a Confederacy-era article about CMC armors, enjoying the writer's snide humor and cynical praises of the 'glorious Marine Corps'.

One passage in particular, written prior to the Chau Sara incident, struck him as quite funny.

"Assured mutual destruction ensures that no matter how big your armor is, the other guy will have a gun big enough to punch through, and the CMC is rather ironical in that it allows its wearer to carry a gun big enough to punch through other CMCs. Why not just all go in the fight with slug throwers and vacuum suits? Sure would save everyone some money…"

Then aliens popped in and that whole theory, though he somewhat explained it later on, was sent crashing down in the dust. The one thing that allowed Terrans to go toe to toe with Zerg and Protoss was the CMC armor. Humanity's warmongering had saved them from destruction and kept them on equal footing with creatures infinitely more powerful.

In the end, violence solves everything.

Right now, on this burning planet, in the middle of the most retarded invasion in recorded history, all those optimist sayings about peace and tolerance being the answer to everything sounded hollow, distant and meaningless.

All his life, Henry had seen mercs and marines bitch about life and drink themselves to a stupor. He'd always treat them with polite contempt, not openly disdaining them, but convince on the inside that he were better than they.

Today, he'd only seen one man die, and even then, it had been quick and he'd looked away before the Zerg could finish the armless marine, yet he still heard the guy's voice, screaming for his mother during the drop. Not the animalistic howl when the Hydra had chopped his arms off, this didn't affect him in the least, but to know this man had a family, a mother he would have wanted to see one last time before dying, despite his broken mind and bleak situation, his only thoughts had been for a woman he probably barely remembered.

Some veterans would see things like that every day for years. They found themselves in his situation countless times before, how could anyone back home ever understand? Jackson might not have been a true marine yet, he could still understand them better.

Outside, Coldmann received a fresh power pack for his suit, taken from that of a downed marine, and earned himself another two hours of functionality, and went back to his sentry duty.

He scanned the debris field for a minute, then turned to the landing pad. Jackson's boot could be seen inside the dropship, motionless in the dark.

He didn't like Jackson, the other private had abandoned his post by the ramp without permission and again acted without the sarge's word when he recharged his suit on damaged turrets. The man was unreliable, undisciplined and a coward, unfit to be a Dominion Marine. And that thing he'd seen on his back, earlier. Coldmann thought it had been light playing tricks with his eyes, at first, heat waves, maybe, but thinking back, he became convinced there really was something riding along on Fresh Meat's back. A parasite, maybe? Who knows with Zerg? But nobody else seemed to have spotted it and nothing in the private's behavior indicated he could be working for the Zerg… Coldmann decided to keep a close eye on his comrade from this point onward, and to shoot him at the first sign of infection.

Heller, apparently desperate to keep busy, soon retreated to the cockpit, where she did her best to fix the mess of wire that had replaced her flight instruments.

The Spectres, two men, two women, clad in black and armed with supressed AGR-18s, arrived a few minutes later, cloaked and perplexed.

Three resocs and a child, the sole survivors of a Zerg surprise attack. Should they make contact? It seemed risky, something felt wrong about these people, their behavior thus far made little sense. Why not call for evac? Why set up on an untenable position to wait for reinforcements that could take days to reach them?

Three of them agreed to just keep on walking, but one, plugged to the mind of the only real marine in that squad, decided against it. She like how the man thought, though confused and disorganized, his thoughts almost had a poesy to them. Quite a bit of paranoia as well, but what can you expect from marines?

The others, however, were harder to read, fuzzy. One was a coward, one pretended to be something he wasn't and one had no thoughts of his own, only propaganda. The Spectre stayed put, but remained hidden, smiling to herself as she just enjoyed the show.

Only one out of these four would survive. She had her own preferences, but didn't get her hopes up: Although a warrior at heart, her favourite's mind remained poisoned by the Dominion, and his adversaries were already moving against him while he focused on the wrong threat.

This would be an entertaining show indeed.


	4. This one time, at boot camp

_Speakers across camp spat the dominion's anthem; drums and trumpets fit to wake the dead, but failing to wake the unconscious recruits of C barracks._

_The instructor, a former siege tank driver named Mark Steel, entered the dark building with a scornful grimace. Another batch of mindless meatsacks._

"_On your feet, soldiers! I want you maggots out in the courtyard in five!" His voice, used to compete with the thunder of big guns and rumbling of massive engines, carried across the room like a gunshot, causing most of the company to snap at attention. A few days earlier, these men had been civilians and criminals, but hypno-training had taught them the basics of military procedure, how to handle a gun and other little things that could be taught easily and did not require full blown training exercises._

_Basic used to take months, it now took weeks. Progress…_

_One of the meatsacks stayed in bed, however, and Steel applied standard procedure to that maggot: He flipped his mattress over to the floor and roared instructions at the poor bastard's face._

_Nothing. A light snoring could be heard from under the mattress. Nobody could fake that… Nobody could possibly remain asleep through getting thrown on the floor and roared at._

_Grabbing the limp wrist of the recruit, Mark used a military version of a super-market barcode scanner and read the serial number tattooed to the kid's wrist._

_108-300-013_

_Philip Cole. Volunteer, tracked to be a Marauder, used to work in a Kel-Morian mining world until it was liberated by the Dominion, already an artist with explosives… Twenty-two years old… This kid had worked in mines since his pre-teen._

_To that boy, Basic would be a breeze, he was used to being a slave, waking up to death threats and insults, slaving away all day in the dark, loud noises only amplified by confined spaces…_

_Steel prodded him in the ribs with his electrical baton. That did the trick and the small but bulky recruit leapt to his feet, yelling "I'm up! I'm up! I didn't eat the cooki… Uh… Sir?_

_-Shut up, maggot! Get on out of here while I'm feeling generous! Go! Gogogogogo! And he escorted the yelping kid with prods of his baton all the way to the courtyard. _

_How to stand in formation was one of the things the rookies had learned through hypno-training, so they were already in a square formation at arm's length of each other. _

_Sleeping beauty took his place in the formation and Master Sergeant Steel introduced himself._

"_You will call me sir, and I want my name to be the first and last thing I hear from you, that clear?!"_

_The answer was unanimous, preprogramed in the troops subconscious, "Sir, yes, sir!" _

_The kids were shivering like virgins in a brothel, still clad in their undies, and Steel took his sweet time inspecting them. One kid actually had taken the time to don his wool overall. Which came as a surprise to the instructor. The things had been tossed under every recruit's bed during the night and they certainly hadn't been given time to dress up before being run out of the barracks._

_That boy stuck out as a sore thumb and, the closer Steel got, the weirder it became to the old Sergeant. Kid actually wore fingerless gloves and padded boots, all of which had been issued during the night._

_He stepped up to the boy's face, thinking the kid should be grateful Mark had good dental hygiene, and asked, in a strong but neutral voice, "Tell me, why is it you're all dressed up while the others here are freezing their genitals off?" A few female members of the company glanced down with some degree of smugness, but kept quiet otherwise._

"_Sir, I woke up early, sir!_

_-Farm boy?_

_-Sir, no, sir, light sleeper is all, sir!" _

_Steel nodded at that explanation. A lot of backwater kids found the Corps to be a breeze compared to life on the farm. Chew was nourishing and plentiful, beds were good, clothes were warm and the job required little to no mental effort. He scanned this kid's wrist and checked his file._

_108-300-016_

_Henry Navarro-Jackson, native from Bacchus moon, twenty-three. A floater. The kid had done a bit of everything in his time, from janitor to butcher and waiter. Most of these job had ended with him being fired over inattention mistakes, sloppy work, complete lack of interest in his job. Laziness aside, that kid seemed promising enough, as evidenced by the fact his balls hadn't retreated back into his throat in the polar cold of the camp._

"_So, we've got a sleeper and a thinker, that's a start!" Steel returned to the front of the formation, "But do we have Marines in this outfit?" He looked every last one of them in the eyes. Jackson flinched, Cole returned the look, everyone else just looked straight ahead in a sleepy haze._

"_What a bunch of apes! No, you don't even rate that high, you're monkeys, feces tossing, knuckle dragging…" Insulting as it may be, one had to admire the creativity of his rant. Not once, in almost twenty minutes, did he repeat himself nor curse or direct his anger at a soldier in particular. _

_Jackson showed no sign of anger at the stream of insults, but Cole and a few other volunteers were clearly getting upset, some twitching and clenching their jaws, others openly staring at the instructor._

_A shorter training meant harsher exercises and ruling with an iron fist, it meant spotting troublesome elements right of the bat and beating them into submission, which would be this exercise's goal._

"_You maggots are a disgrace to the Corps and the Dominion, "He almost said Confederacy. "so, do we have a marine yet? Any of you monkeys thinks he's got what it takes to shut me up?"_

_Nobody moved, but anger rose amongst the most hot tempered recruits, only a handful were still shivering, the cold drowned in waves of hatred. _

"_Nobody? C'mon, there won't be trouble for anyone, just show ol' Steel what you've got!"_

_As predicted, Cole stepped forward before anyone else, the shame and confusion from earlier having been turned to anger in the boy's mind. Easier to just blame everything on the sarge, that's what they're for._

"_I reckon I can take you, sir." Though the young miner had no way of knowing, this was, without contest, the stupidest sentence he'd ever uttered in his life._

_Steel beckoned him forward and threw his electric baton to an assistant instructor, one of four lined up along the barrack's wall. "Rules?" _

_The question puzzled Cole, clearly showing he had no martial training whatsoever. "Whatever you want, sir, I'm not fussy."_

_Stupid answer, but a brave one. Steel found out long ago stupidity made up most acts of bravery. "Alright, start when you're ready, kiddo. Good luck."_

_Cole was a bulky kid, but two heads smaller than the sarge, who, to be fair, was quite tall himself, and reasonably muscular. The recruit tried to tackle his instructor, roaring like a bull as he went. Steel could have sidestepped, but that would be a bad example. End the fight quick and dirty was the lesson he wished to teach._

_He pushed a foot forward, under Cole's center of gravity, and grabbed the boy's wrist, twisting it outward before leaning forward himself. Cole lifted off the ground, rolled over Steel's back and slammed back down in a sickening crunch. The instructor let go of his wrist, the whole arm now twisted in an unnatural fashion. "Broken?_

_-Ah… Don't think so, sir, dislocated, I reckon…" The defeated recruit kept admirably calm as he walked to the infirmary on his own._

_Steel then turned back to the company, "So, we do have a marine in this outfit! Do we have another?" _

_Sure enough, no one else volunteered, some thought about it, but quickly dismissed the idea. Good, point made. Now, one of many things subliminal training couldn't implant upon soldiers was esprit de corps and discipline. Everything they'd do for that next week would have for sole purpose to harden these boys into marines._

_Right, as if..._


	5. The Thing

"Jackson, wake up." The sarge's voice jolted Henry back to reality. They were alone in the dropship, the darkness chewed away by a volcanic glow near the ramp.

Ashes and dust filled the sky, making it impossible to guess whether it was still day or early in the night. Jackson's suit told him he'd been asleep for three hours, however.

"Problem, sir?" The Dominion marine sucked on his cigar, behind a closed visor, then answered.

"I think so, follow me." He helped the private on his feet and walked down the ramp, Impaler armed and ready. Jackson's own rifle still stood against the bulkhead, where he'd left it. He checked the ammo count and slung the thing on his back before following his NCO.

On top of the platform, in a half circle formation surrounding the gun emplacement, his three companions watched him climb the last echelons before turning to the sergeant, who pointed to the twin Gatling guns.

"This thing worked just fine last we checked, right?" It was a rethorical question, but Coldmann still barked an affirmative. Heller just nodded and Jackson tried to keep start up diagnostic windows out of his face, in the end he gave up and lifted the visor out of his view. "Well, it doesn't anymore."

The marine sergeant squeezed both thumbs in the triggers, earning only an electrical whining. He then pulled the handles towards himself, which should have spun the turret right, but once again earned only buzzes and groans.

Heller stepped forward to inspect the weapons while Jackson flicked the safety off his rifle. Somehow, Coldmann misinterpreted and Henry found himself looking down the barrel of his teammate's C-14.

Twin twisters of ashes danced amongst the debris field, lazily sucking pipes and shards of neo-steel before dropping them in a cacophonous melody.

"Wire are fe... Wow…" Heller interrupted herself when she saw the massive marines staring each other down. Jackson had not raised his weapon, but the look in his face made it clear that would not last.

The sarge kept his own Impaler pointed down and his visor lowered. "What are you doing, private?" His tone was calm, matter-of-fact, and Coldmann's orange visor pivoted slowly to face his superior.

"It's him, he's infested…" It made no doubt in the soldier's mind, the only thing keeping him from pulling the trigger at this point was that he had not received the sergeant's go-ahead. "He abandoned his post after drop! He loaded the guns, we…"

As a marine, Coldmann excelled at his job, having earned an above average rating in marksmanship, close combat, survival and communication. Despite lacking in personal initiative, the kid had all the qualities of a good marine, whereas Jackson had below average accuracy, excellent survival skills, poor communication abilities and an average score at close combat. Neither of them seemed much more valuable than the other, making the situation even more complicated.

The sarge stepped forward, his visor rotating left and right, slowly, as he pulled on his cigar again. "That right, Jackson?" He asked, slowly.

"No! I'm not infested!" Cried the private, his mind numbed by shock and disbelief.

"Exactly what an infested would say!" Coldmann was now prodding the top of Jackson's helmet with his C-14, finger on the trigger and a round chambered.

The sergeant finally shook his head. "He can't be infected, I've been monitoring his suit since we dropped, now stand down, private.

-We can't be sure, we…

-I gave you a direct order, son! You. Will. Stand down!" The sarge stepped forward again, his index finger pointing to the floor, stressing the _down_. Coldmann's visor tilted aside slightly as he looked at the NCO, and that was all Henry needed to turn this around.

If questioned later, Coldmann would swear on his mother's grave that Jackson had grown three extra hands which he used to beat the poor marine senseless. How Henry found himself holding both his and Coldmann's Impaler would also remain a mystery to anyone but himself and the sarge.

Once the resoc had been _pacified_, Jackson flipped him on his back and helped him up, promptly batting the dust from his comrade's armor.

"How the…

-If we live through this," Henry spoke, grinning under his helmet, "I'll show you what happened."

Steel had used that technique on him once at boot camp and Jackson spent the remainder of his time in basic trying to squeeze the takedown out of the sarge. This had been the first time he'd used it on someone outside a training exercise. Worked like a charm.

It was a simple disarming move where one had to slip under his enemy's weapon, uppercut them to screw their balance and snatch their weapon in the same move, put one foot behind the enemy's and give them a good shove or headbutt.

Seemed easy enough, but getting the timing and coordination right took days of work.

Coldmann gratefully retrieved his rifle and kept it carefully aimed at the platform's slip proof floor.

"You sure this thing's been sabotaged?" He spoke, looking back at Heller and the Non-com.

Jackson just stepped up to the gun, shoving Heller out of the way and ignoring her bitching altogether.

"Possitive, kid, I don't know who did it, but my guess is we're not alone here…"

A purple goo had been injected in every barrel, every cog and gears and every single fucking hole they could find. It would take days and special tools to get these guns shooting again.

Henry scraped some of it off and brought the purple powder close to his visor, "This is biological matter…" He whispered, before repeating it aloud.

The others seemed confuse at the importance he gave that detail.

"You don't get it, guys, they didn't break the gears or jam the barrels, the clogged it up with… Something…"

The sarge kneeled next to the weapon as well and checked it out for a moment. "Of course… Shit."

He ran a quick diagnostic on both privates' suits and turned to Heller, who smiled like a cat caught eating the parrot. "You…" He whispered, dramatically. She opened her mouth, probably intent on gloating over her victory, but was cut short, literally, by a storm of 8mm spikes from Coldmann's Gauss rifle.

The severed legs gushed out purple blood and attempted to keep their balance for a few seconds, only to dissolve into that same purple goo. Coldmann stepped up to the bubbling pond and fired another burst into. He finally raised his visor and spat into the goo, his saliva mixing with the jelly in a steaming blue patch.

"Well, kids," The sarge smiled, offering cigars to both his subordinates, "looks like this is a man's party now."

Jackson took the death stick and, though he'd never even smoked before, jammed it in the corner of his mouth to be lit by the match held in the sarge's left hand. Coldmann did the same a second later, as Henry coughed up a lung.

All three turned to the deserted base, Jackson still coughing, and just waited for the Zerg to come and finish the job. When the did, they would be met by…

"Can I get one too? I could really use a smoke…"

Sitting on Henry's shoulder pad, the Spectre's shimmering form dissolved into a black bodysuit. All three marines, startled by the relaxed voice, aimed their weapons at Jackson, he himself awkwardly pointing his gun in a fashion similar to suicide victims…

She sported Raynor's Raiders' emblem, so Coldmann and the Sarge lowered their weapons instantly, but Jackson began a little dance to knock her off his back, which ended with him almost falling off the platform.

The Spectre left his suit to sit on the guns, giggling like a schoolgirl as Henry fanned his arms backward to stop himself from falling. Coldmann had to grab the front of his suit and pull him forward at the last second, only then did the Spectre speak again.

"You know, Fresh Meat, you're no fun at all, you spoiled what could have been an awesome horror scene…" She pressed two fingers to her helmet, mimicking a pistol, and lowered her thumb as though pulling the trigger, "I was looking forward to watching you meatheads eat each other alive…" She pointed to Coldmann next, "Had my money on big guy here killing everyone and shooting himself next! But since you're all not dead, I guess we might as well join up with the main forces, right?"

All three marines just stared, both at the Spectre and each other. It was Jackson who spoke first. "Who the fuck are you?!"


	6. Spheres of Metal

**A/N: And I'm back! Thanks for the reviews, everyone, and yes, I'm going somewhere with it. And no, this isn't marine corps propaganda, my country doesn't have a marine corps, so...**

Jessie James. No kidding, that was how that Spectre called herself. No only that, but she even wore a cowboy hat and desperado-style mask over her rebreather. She looked downright ridiculous in Jackson's opinion, but Coldmann thought the Zerg teeth sewn in a grin on that mask gave her a frankly fearsome look.

Sarge, though he kept quiet about it, thought the whole sewn trophy thing was nice, but the face mask would mean no smoking and that didn't sit right with the non-com.

All four Terrans were having a peaceful stroll in across Char's lava field, Jessie having started a match of 'I Spy' only Coldmann was brain-dead enough to enjoy.

The Spectre being lightly armored and exposed to the extreme heat, she rode on Jackson's shoulder, her suit's reactor jacked to his battery as compensation for the added weight.

His suit's power level had not dropped below seventy percent in the hour and a half they'd been walking, though it did fluctuate according to the Spectre's level of awareness.

Ghost's suits were powered by their own brain and there were rumors floating around about Spectres being enhanced Ghosts or something…

Basically, the girl powered his armor with her brain and that made him very uncomfortable.

"I spy with my little eye… Something red… And hot.

-Lava?" Offered Jackson as Coldmann thought hard about it. Jessie shook her head,

"Nah, man, lava was the last one, keep up!

-My exhaust ports then?

-Bingo! Your turn."

Henry actually looked around, but they were walking down a natural trench with nothing to see but volcanic rock and ashes.

"I spy… Wait, you're a telepath, you already know what I'm gonna say!"

This earned him a sigh as the psionic assassin, previously perched on his right shoulder pad, straddled his helmet like a child on her father's shoulders. "You're no fun, smart guy, you…" All trace of playfulness and humor left her voice and the following sentence was barked with precision and cold accuracy, "Multiple contacts on our six and twelve, Zerg. ETA: ten seconds, coming in hot!" She stepped off his shoulders and dropped to a knee, gun aimed at the ash cloud now obscuring the trench entrance.

"Coldmann, on point with me!" Hollered the Sarge, his rifle at the ready, "Jackson, James, bring up the rear!"

Henry fumbled with his rifle safety catch, the thing clogged with ash, and promptly aimed down sights at the growing cloud.

They waited that way, all three marines in an standing firing position and the Spectre squeezing herself into the smallest possible target, motionless and quiet outside of a soft whine from their suits' servos as they tracked every shadow until a subtle beep from the threat recognition software got them on their toes again.

Ten seconds drew near and things remained eerie quiet, then they passed and nothing happened. Twelve seconds, Coldmann took a hand off his rifle to wiggle his fingers, then returned it to the weapon.

Twenty seconds. Jackson lowered his weapon, turning to Jessie, mouth stretched in a smug grin.

"You know, they can cure tha-" A positive beep rose from his suit and multiple silhouettes were outlined in red on his HUD. "Cont-Contact!

-Open..." He opened fire just as the first Zergling, equally surprised to find them there, stopped dead in its track. Jackson's Impaler kicked up dust, as it was still pointed down, but the recoil soon brought it on target, blasting a row of smoking holes in the Zerg's carapace.

He lined up another silhouette and shot a controlled burst where the multiple limbs joined in a twisted mess. The creature yelped and died just as James' rifle cracked, ending another Zerg's life.

Coldmann opened up next, bagging three targets in one burp, a feat the sergeant was quick to imitate, but not before spitting out the stump of his previous cigar to stick an unlit one in its place.

The Zerg were not expecting them to be down there and whoever controlled them obviously took a while to understand they would not get the Terrans in that chokepoint.

Bodies were piled up to shoulder height when the Zerg finally stopped coming. All eyes converged on Jessie, who shook her head and got back on her feet.

"Tactical withdrawal, they'll wait just out of range until we leave the trench." She checked her ammunition reserve and scowled. "As soon as we're out, they'll cut us off, surround us and we're happy meals."

Jackson's own ammo stock looked decent, one clip and a half left, about six hundred shots, not counting his sidearm.

"So what?" Asked Coldmann, rolling his shoulder and stomping around like a boxer before a fight, "We go back the way we came? Take them by surprise?"

The barrel of his Impaler smoked and glowed in the dust as he talked. A step behind him, Sarge was using his own rifle's overheated barrel to light his cigar.

When he looked up, the non-com spotted Jackson's perplexed look and laughed. "Only two ways you should light a cigar, son: Wooden matches or the smoking barrel of your rifle.

-Enlightening," Spoke the Spectre, still all business, "could we save the testosterone talk for after we've figured this out?"

But that sentence brought a spark of inspiration in Henry's mind, one Jessie would have spotted were she not keeping track of enough Zerglings to start an alien trashball team.

"We climb on their corpse." He spoke, already getting to work, hauling the dead Zerg of one pile to the other.

"Fekkin' insane…" Was Coldmann's prognosis, but the other two quickly caught on to the simple solution: Pile up corpses until they could reach the edge of this trench. The Zerg kept just out of sight, so that whichever directing the Terrans picked, the Swarm would know and the forces in the opposite direction would advance.

If the Terran somehow found a third way out… "James, are they all in the trenches?" Jackson's voice was even, relaxed, an odd contrast with the panting and shaking marine that had squeezed half a dozen shot in the dirt a minute earlier. He worked with ease and confidence, letting his suit do the work.

Sarge kept quiet at this private's overdose of thinking. As a good NCO, he knew when and who to listen. Lots of grunts were much smarter than their bosses and every grunt was, thus, encouraged to feed suggestions up the chain of command. A sergeant's job was to filter the rare flashes of genius from metaphorical verbal diarrhea.

"Affirmative, eighteen this way, twenty that way…"

Jackson thought about it and sighed. "Shame we don't have any explosives…

-You mean like these?" Coldmann pulled a leather belt from his rear ammo pouch, which made it look like some very disturbing porn vid about steel gorillas and anal beads. The 'beads' turned out to be fragmentation grenades, retrieved from the sabotaged dropship as they headed out.

Henry smiled as he hauled the final dead Zerg.

"Completely fo-" Alarms went off all over Jackson's suit as the Zergling's mouth clamped shut on his helmet. The thing's guts hung from its bisected thorax and it had only one claw left, but it didn't need them; the metal of Jackson's helmet groaned and caved in under the pressure, the HUD flickering off to give Henry a perfect view down the Zerg's throat… Its tongue lapped his visor, as if trying to poke through and only when cracks began to appear in the thing did the marine began struggling.

Punching got him nowhere, so he grabbed a fistful of tendrils and flesh, where the thing's hind legs should have been, and yanked hard on them, ripping out the Zergling's inner organs in one terrified groan.

The creature went limp, its jaw slack, and Henry carefully pried it off his face.

A few hesitant beeps and flickering of lights later, his suit came back online, droning 'Threat detected' as if nothing had happened.

"Fuck you."

He scaled the corpses without another word, trembling like a Pomeranian on cocaine as tears rolled down his cheek. Just one Zerg, an injured one at that, a second of carelessness, and he'd almost bought the farm. Pucker factor: off the fuckin' chart.

"Sarge…" He spoke once at the top, quickly joined by his interlocutor, "Sarge, I want out of this shit… Is there a form, discharge papers, something I can fill to just… Bail out?"

The edge taunted them, just out of reach, so Jackson kneeled to help his NCO up.

Once on solid ground, the sergeant did a quick perimeter sweep, walking five steps out, weapon at the ready, before returning to the traumatized marine in the trench.

"Sure, I could say you trash talked me, dishonorable discharge, maybe some brig time, no pension, then it's like nothing ever happened, you can go back to whatever the fuck you did before the Corps…"He kneeled, "But if you think there's some paper I can sign that will make the Zerg quit trying to kill you, you don't get it at all." The sarge's visor rose as he extended his armored hand, "The Zerg'll kill everyone and everything until there's nothin' left but them, wether you got a gun or no don't mean shit to them, but being a marine means you got a suit, and a gun and pals with standard issue balls of steel to watch your back when they come for you."

Jackson took the hand and gasped as he was dragged upward like a ragdoll in a twister. The sergeant kept talking as he helped Coldmann up.

"I served in the Confederacy, colonial militia, the Sons of Korhal and now I'm Dominion, believe me, I've seen every cause, every ideology and every tyrant you can think of, so I won't bullshit you about patriotism."

Coldmann took the sarge's place as he went to talk with Jackson face to face. He sounded… Not angry. Passionate. Not the Resoc kind of passionate, though…

"Thing is, son, we human are an endangered species, the only thing standing between hell and us is the Marine Corps. Umojan, Dominion, Confederate, doesn't mean shit, some people are cut out for great things, politics, prophets, heroes, and some, like you and me, are meant to hold the fucking line while those indecisive cunts make up their minds. Now, if you think you'll ever do anything more meaningful of your existence, then don't let me keep you, otherwise, soldier, shut up and soldier."

He handed Jackson a set of grenades. The marine smiled before taking the spherical devices from his NCO.

"Balls of steel, huh?"


	7. Jar-Squids

"About time we went on the offensive!

-Radio silence, Coldmann.

-Just saying, since we touched down we've been hiding like pussies, it's good to be the bad guys…

-Private, didn't I just give you an order?

-Sorry, boss, stimpacks always make me…

-Dude! Shut up!" Jackson, also high on stims, felt none of the euphoria Coldmann seemed to experience. He felt rage and nothing else. Hungry, maybe… No, his digestive system was just throwing a fit, trying to find something to feed the marine's overclocked metabolism.

Both privates had set up concealed firing positions and covered both ends of the trench while Jessie and Sarge readied their explosives. It was supposed to be the other way around, with Coldmann and Jackson tossing grenades while the others took pot shots, but both privates turned out to lack the dexterity needed to pull the pin.

Sarge and James took a minute to ready themselves as they faced each-other by the pile of dead Zerg, just out of the ambushers' sight.

The NCO ran diagnostics to ensure all systems would work as they were meant to while Jessie stretched like an Olympic gymnast. Once both runners were ready, they exchanged a swift nod before warning the others by com.

"Begin operation." And begin it did; chunks of Zerg biomass were kicked out of the trench, some still flailing around, seeking a target to maul. Each runner carried a dozen frags to spread over sixty and forty meters of crevice respectively. Jessie had the long stretch and would run straight for Jackson once she reached the edge of the trench.

Things got interesting about three seconds following the last detonation, the Spectre about ten paces from the easy slope marking the trench's beginning. Zerglings exploded from that position, most of them missing limbs but very much alive and zeroed in on Jessie's skinny butt.

Eight Zerg, at most, were chasing her, but to Henry, it remained a terrifying sight, blood everywhere and the badass black operator running for her life, cowboy hat torn from her helmet along the way and trampled by the ravenous horde.

One Zergling, bigger, healthier than the rest, caught up to James halfway to safety and leapt at her, claws spread in a thorny hug.

It was blasted back mid-flight by three 8mm spikes. Another alien caught up to the Spectre and tried to cut her off, only to have its right foreleg blasted from underneath it, which sent it spinning away from Jessie.

They were now so close to Henry's position he could have communicated aggression by eyebrow signals. Instead, the Marine chose to let his Impaler do the talking. The selector groaned as it was switched to fully automatic and the whole weapon roared in response as hypersonic needles were forced out by a combination of chemical propellant and magnetic accelerators.

Shells leapt out of the gun, spinning and dancing in the wind before bouncing around an ash layer so ancient it had its own dunes and valleys.

Boots firmly dug in the ground at shoulder width and his cracked visor sealed shut, Henry hosed the Zerg down like a passive-aggressive fireman obsessed with making every droplet count.

Jessie froze at that, as she was still standing dead in between the swarm and Jackson, and shielded her eyes from the onslaught, as if it would prevent a stray bullet from ripping her head off.

Not a single round hit or even grazed her, but the private had carefully avoided targets close to her and, when she opened her eyes, it was only to be yanked back by the armored marine as he hammer-smacked an airborne Zergling with his rifle. The 'ling tried to claw its way to James, but a massive boot crushed its spine seconds before an 8mm spike was offhandedly pumped in its skull.

Jackson didn't have time to bring his gun from the dead Zerg to the live ones, so he used his free arm to whack both remaining creatures with their dead pal and, in the same motion, brought his weapon to bear.

Two burps later, the Zerg wave was neutralized and Coldmann reported success on his end as well.

"C'mon, kids, form up on me." Called the Sarge, from the opposite end of the trench.

They avoided the crevice this time, sticking on the high ground with weapons at the ready the whole way. Nothing jumped at them and they found their companions relaxed but ready; safeties off and visors down.

"You guys sure can walk the walk." Jessie spoke as she walked up to Coldmann to deliver an enthusiastic fist bump, "I sure hope we work together again one day!"

A soft whine interrupted Jackson's response. He looked up, recognizing the sound of a Terran dropship, but it was the sergeant who spotted it, merely a dot growing between two rocky pitons back the way they'd come.

They coms came alive with much parasites, relaying a calm if bored male voice:

"E Comp… is Vulture 3-6… read?" When the men looked back down, they were alone, just three marines in a sea of ashes.

It was the Sarge who reported in, as per regulation, "Vulture, E Company, we suffered heavy casualties, three survivors…" He hesitated, his eyes drifting over to where Jessie had been, and he shook his head quietly. "Over."

The transport quickly grew into a red and black blob, headed straight for them, and its pilot said nothing for almost a minute.

"E Company, Vulture 3-6, I've got a bead on your location, coming in for pick up. You guys got lost or something? This is way out in the friggin' woods…

-Long story, Vulture.

-Long trip back to base, can't wait to hear it."

Coldmann took a long look around, trying to figure out what was missing, before finally exclaiming, "Hey, where's the psychic at?"

Henry sighed and waved harder at the approaching ship. The thing barely stroked Char's surface that all three marines were aboard and strapped in, the ramp closing behind them like the mouth of a toothless sea animal.

Henry squeezed his gun in a wall rack and blinked his whole helmet open. He enjoyed the cool air blown by ceiling fans as it brushed his shaved scalp and kept his eyes closed for a full minute. Then the Sarge smacked his left pauldron from his seat, across the vessel.

"Still want those discharge papers, son?" He questioned, a playful smile tugging at his lips.

Jackson shook his head and the NCO nodded before turning his attention to the pilot, an Asian man in medic armor and short black hairs. He was curious about the squad's story and so the sergeant obliged.

Coldmann had also removed his helmet, sitting at Henry's right, and was looking around. Other marines were also seated in the troop bay, all weary and battered looking. They sported E Company's colors; survivors from the forward base.

Coldmann, the Sarge and Jackson were reaching the end of their rope and they'd been late to the party, whereas these guys had been the main fuckin' course. Humbling, in a lot of ways…

The ride was uneventful, they were redirected to the DNS-828, a fresh, as of yet unnamed Battlecruiser used as a field hospital by Warfield troops. Orders were to report with Colonel Douglas for re-deployment, seeing as E-Company's standing forces could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and many of these boys were missing some fingers.

As the dropship awaited clearance a lieutenant nicknamed Rider, nothing more than a disembodied voice in their coms, filled them in on the situation:

While the Zerg were busy chewing on E's ass, Raynor's Raiders made a push against the Queen of Blades' main hive and used some wizard shit to take her down before shipping her off to the Hyperion. The Emperor himself then showed up aboard his new flag ship to cry like a spoiled brat, demanding Kerrigan be handed over to him.

Whatever happened next could only be described as 'Clusterfuck' and 'Daddy-issues.'

Sarge and Jackson traded a perplexed eyebrow raise at the man's analysis of the current socio-political climate.

"See what I meant? Some people are meant to be whiny bitches and govern Dominions, others are meant to be real men and roll around in the dirt.

-And a few of them just get a job and don't bother to boast every five seconds." The other man, a Reaper Corps sergeant, leaned forward from the back of the ship to look at the marines. "Don't recall seeing you guys on the ground, how comes?"

It was Jackson who answered, "Base was overrun by the time we landed, we thought no one else…

-Shut up, private, I didn't ask your opinion." The man's blood red optics fixed Henry in his seat, earning a discreet sneer from the Sarge and a fumbling apology from the private.

"It's like the kid said," the marine sergeant growled, chewing harder on his cigar, "place was a mess, coms were down, we just held the landing pads until we were sure no one else would come…

-Then you just took a stroll in the desert?"

Coldmann smacked Jackson's shoulder and frowned, seemingly asking what that guy's problem was, but Henry had not the slightest clue. He shrugged and mouthed 'Sergeants' as though it were the most obvious answer.

"Seek and destroy, we were hunting down remnants of the Zerg force." The sergeant's story made no sense; at no point had they intended to chase down enemy forces, they were merely trying to save their own skins.

The other NCO nodded, his gas mask clicking softly as he thought about it. "Yeah, makes sense…" Was all he said before leaning back against the hull.

The dropship had barely powered off that a Navy officer, an ensign with clean brown hairs and rosy cheeks, jogged up to its groaning ramp.

The thing was still two feet above deck when the man hopped in. "Welcome aboard, soldiers," he called, looking around the survivors with an air of intense focus, "You, you, you there and the guy out back," he pointed to four unharmed Reapers, including the sergeant from earlier, "drop the jets and grab some stretchers, we'll need help getting those wounded to the sick bay." he turned to the Sarge, the highest ranking Marine on board, and gave a quick glance to a data slate in his hand.

"Right… Sergeant Ulman? You and your men have been transferred to Naval Military Police, effective immediately." Henry and Coldmann exchanged a glance. Ulman? Military Police?

"So… We're not… Can they… Sarge, can they do that?" Coldmann turned to his superior for guidance, but the old NCO just blew out a stream of smoke, pondering the question for a moment. He then rose from his seat and looked down at the Ensign.

"Says who?

-The Emperor himself." He offered his data slate, which the Sergeant carefully picked.

Mengsk wanted to rebuild his fleet ASAP, that meant pumping out fresh vessels faster than breeding rabbits and staffing these ships with whatever rabble they could grab. Promoting a marine to MP was pretty much the same as promoting a police officer to firefighter. Close, but not exactly the same job.

The Sergeant turned to his men with a disappointed frown, "Well, Jackson, looks like someone up above likes you…" He then added, to himself, "And hates my guts."


	8. Career Orientation

**A/N: So, did you know if one marine, air force and army general are on a ship with a navy cook, the cook is considered to be the ship's captain? And if that cook doesn't know and one of the generals takes command but screw up, the cook will be held responsible.**

Ulman, Jackson and Coldmann had all been issued blue-grey uniforms, tickets for two minutes abrasive showers and transfer paper for their new CO.

Said CO, Commodore Hélène DuPont, had served eighteen years with the UED before being captured by Dominion forces. A Naval Intelligence member since she'd been released two years ago, Commodore DuPont now crumbled under her many responsibilities as Captain of a Battlecruiser and leader of the local DNI, which explained why she had chosen the Marines assigned to her ship at random amongst the able-bodied troops being shipped off planet.

Still, she didn't like handing her ship's security to just anyone and met her new crewmembers in groups of four, dress uniform and Navy rank insignias mandatory.

Both Coldmann and Jackson felt awkward with their new title of 'Crewmen', but the Sarge had quickly taken a liking to being called 'Master Chief Petty Officer first class'. Though the other two were overly muscular and looked awkward in their Navy uniform, Henry, being smaller, looked just like any other crew member. That caught the Commodore's attention as she inspected the three men, along with a woman they'd never met, a Medic, judging by the patches on her pearl white uniform.

DuPont smirked to herself when Jackson cringed under her scrutinizing eye. Just a kid. She went to the Sarge next and he didn't flinch, not out of defiance, but simply because he'd seen far too much for anyone to make him flinch, even superior officer.

She looked at his file through her ocular implants. Turned down five recommendations for commission, no explanation was ever given, he probably never wanted the responsibility.

"Chief Petty Officer Ulman, are you angry about being transferred to my ship?" If he was, it did not show, but a man like him was bound to resent being put on paper-pushing duty.

"Yes, Ma'am." The truthful answer surprised her, but not in a bad way, officers like Ulman were rare and those with enough guts to speak their mind downright precious.

She called them soldiers at ease and had them sit on four crates that served as office chair while the Commodore awaited actual furniture.

She took place behind the refrigerator-like neo-steel box which pretended to be a desk and fetched two forms from a mess of paperwork, filling the edge of her desk.

"This," She pushed a sheet toward the sergeant, "will get you transferred to the Marine ninth company and this," She handed him the other sheet, "is a recommendation for a Navy commission. Just need your name on either one of these documents and you're set.

-Why would I want a Navy commission?

-Your own ship, your own expeditionary force, Navy Spec ops, maybe… I don't care, Chief, the Navy needs men like you and the Marines don't seem to interest you anymore." The others kept quiet, feeling out of place but unwilling to mention it.

"I thought we were being transferred to Navy MP."

She smiled at that sentence, as though it were the most naïve thing she'd heard in a long time.

"You can't transfer someone from the Marine Corps to the Navy without getting bombarded with paperwork and red tapes, but Navy MPs are usually selected from the Marines and once the transfer is done, the MPs can request a commission in either the Navy or the Corps.

-So that's politics?

-Yup."

Commission. That word meant nothing to Coldmann and only evoked an abstract concept to Jackson, a piece of paper separating men from gods, enlisted from officers. He'd never thought the transition between the two had anything to do with politics.

He raised a hand, then quickly lowered it. Things don't work that way in the military. The Commodore, however, took notice and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Speak." That word alone felt more threatening than a whole swarm of Zergling.

"Uh… Is that an open offer, or just him?"

She blinked Jackson's file open and quickly revised her analysis of him. Not just a kid, not even brain panned. How could she have missed that? The severe frown on her face was interpreted as a negative answer by the Crewman, who mumbled an apology and sunk in his seat.

His civilian life was unremarkable and he never really stood out during his short military career, but that, in itself was quite interesting. This boy had gone from high-school to barman seamlessly, then switching to waiter when he lost that job, followed by card dealer in a casino, doorman at a hotel, butcher for that hotel's supplier and marine when it became obvious civilian life would never work out.

IQ, education, brain waves, there were many ways to evaluate someone's intelligence, but DuPont had developed her own over the years; Adaptability. An intelligent person could adapt to anything, never stopped learning and quickly grew bored once the situation lost its challenge.

"No, I have plans for you already…" That scared Jackson even more.

Coldmann was next being evaluated. A Marine to the core, former member of a street gang, two charges for murder on file and nothing else, the kid was loyal as a German Shepard and barely smarter, but he could pull apart and re-assemble a C-14 in thirty seconds. If Navarro-Jackson shone by his smarts and Ulman by his experience, Coldmann was notable for his sheer stupidity, though not in a bad way. This was a man you could depend on, smart enough to understand what's going on, too dumb to know when he should switch side…

The Medic was another story. A med school reject, expelled for stim usage and enlisted in the Confederacy at age fifteen, only to serve brig time on her eighteenth birthday when it was discovered she'd lied about her age during recruitment. Sure enough, throwing a party for your eighteenth when you're meant to be twenty-three comes across as pretty odd. A year after that, she went from the Confederate marines to the Dominion and, four years later, took part in the assault on Char.

Abigail Connor knew exactly what she wanted and had no doubt she would get it, the Commodore wouldn't have requested her otherwise. After almost a decade on the frontline, Abby wanted a stable posting, something with actual career opening and respect… Commodore DuPont, on her end, wanted a medical officer to man the med bay. Not a word was spoken between them, the medic signed a single form and earned the right to put 'Doctor' ahead of her name.

She was dismissed first, Ulman came next, stating that he would need some time to decide. Hélène agreed and, as he left, told Coldmann he should check in with Commander Miller on deck C. The crewman saluted before leaving Henry alone with DuPont.

She leaned forward on her desk, looking for the correct phrasing a moment, before simply dumping it on him. "What do you think?"

The ambiguous question did not surprise the soldier as much as his complete lack of answer for it. He thought nothing of the situation, this whole thing, the Navy, Marines, Military Police, Commissions, it was all just dancing around, paperwork, useless talking for the sake of the upper echelon alone. Grunts like him didn't get a say in those things. He'd been a Marine for all of a few hours and, just as he'd grown comfortable in that role, was sent into this mess.

"I think I much preferred when I could just shoot my problem, ma'am.

-Tell me about it." She nodded toward the mess of requisition forms, orders, counter-orders and personnel files that cluttered her fake desk. "But don't let that fool you, we see plenty of action around here." He look doubtful, so she explained, "Marines handle most of the heavy lifting, Reapers take care of recon and Ghosts handle black ops, but they'd be blind as bats without DNI.

-DNI?

-Dominion Naval Intelligence. Ghosts are great to have on the battlefield, but they're really just pretty princesses, won't do any heavy lifting or data analysis, let alone investigation…" She brought up his high-school profile; Decent in Maths. Good enough.

"I'm no analyst…" He seemed spooked by the prospect of a desk job. How cute.

"No? Your MCPO Ulman seemed to think otherwise in his report," She blinked said report into view and read the exact passage aloud, "'…Private Navarro-Jackson pointed out the weapon had been sabotaged by an organic compound, not brute force, and apparently guessed the traitor's identity based on that observation alone…'" She let the words sink in before talking again, "I'm not offering you a full time desk job, you're not made for it, what I offer is a post on my ship's intelligence division, analysing reports from ground troops and sending me the bullshit-free version..."

His mind returned to the trench. He'd wanted out back then, almost killed by a dead Zerg, and had managed to block out the incident by thinking of himself as a marine, a professional soldier, but now he was offered a way out, exactly what he wanted back then, and felt reluctant for whatever reason.

Seeing his hesitation, DuPont continued, "That means warm bed, regular hours better pay and, since you'd be helping me by dealing with all this," She made a dismissive gesture toward the pile of ink an paper, "I'd return the favor by helping you get that commission.

-What happens if I get it?

-Same as Ulman," She shrugged, "your own ship, as captain, engineer or whatever you decide to specialize in, your own team, if you stick to DNI, maybe both, if you get lucky like me… Now, I'm in a hurry, what'll it be?"

Jackson looked around at the crates DuPont used as furniture, obviously unconvinced there, but, after some internal deliberation, asked her which one of these papers he was supposed to fill out.


	9. You Can't Handle The Truth

It was hard. Harder than anything the boy ever was forced to learn. His teacher, an Adjudant from back when they used Cyborgs instead of AIs, had the personality of a brick and the patience of a G-4 Cluster-bomb.

Trigonometry, algebra, military jargon, ship configurations… As soon as Jackson became saturated with one, they would switch to another, stopping only long enough for him to sleep his six hours, then he would wake up to the cyborg setting up the next session. He slept in the 'classroom', an unused monitoring center, filled with electronics and projectors the Adjudant would use to make his point. Every four hours, one of the cooks would knock on the door with Henry's meal; protein sticks and vitamin jelly, then the class would resume.

"The Behemoth-class Battlecruiser was phased out in what year and for what reason?" A trivial question only meant to see if the crewman had been listening.

He had, but his mind hadn't registered the exact year as relevant, "It lacked maneuverability, having only forward facing batteries, and was replaced by the… Uh…" Mengsk had been a real cunt about his fleet after the Brood War, practically switching design every year, "The Hercules or Minotaur," he finally gave up, "Seeing as they were quickly retrofitted then also abandoned for the Gorgon-class."

Gears whined in his mentor's brain as he slammed his fist on an holo-projector. Char flickered in the middle of the room before expanding until the Terran battlecruisers were the size of a small child.

Three of them, however, were twice that size.

"Wrong again! They were never phased out, only retrofitted. The Leviathan and Hercules are the only ships we stopped producing." He smacked the projector again and a Valkyrie frigate appeared.

"What do we use these for?"

He'd only heard of these frigates, stolen from the UED, in hastily written reports and vague suggestions to frontline units, their heavy AA armament and decent cargo capacity allowing them to break through blockades and enemy air to deliver much needed supplies and run like the wind.

"Supply runs, blockade breaking and high-risk insertions.

-Good! You don't have noodles in your head it seems.

-Isn't it a bit stupid, though?" Whatever compassion he'd just earned, he lost instantly.

The instructor's tone was cold as he said "Please do explain that opinion."

Henry thought about it very carefully, Kilburn was a hard man and supremely intelligent, if he considered Jackson's remark as out of place, it most certainly was. Henry went through with it anyway.

"You said earlier we developed the Viking because Valkyries and Wraiths were too unwieldy…" It seemed as though the more he spoke, the less sense his point made. What was he suggesting? Replace the Dropships? Arm them? Speed up the frigates? "We're using an air superiority craft for its secondary features, wouldn't it be cheaper to develop a dedicated model for blockade breaking and high-risk insertions?"

The teacher's face remained blank as he considered his words. His expression was unreadable when he spoke "To what end? What are the Valkyrie's flaws?"

Jackson silently cursed himself and flipped the question around his head a moment, simultaneously reviewing all he knew about the stolen design. "Too slow, no good against ground targets, very costly to manufacture and repair…" There was one last thing, a nudging fact he couldn't quite recall… Something about shields and power supplies… Why would it be relevant? Shields required too much juice to be powered during combat, they only used them in orbital re-entry, capital ships or fighters, Battlecruisers to Vikings, so why did it feel so important right now?

Kilburn's mouth opened just as the information resurfaced and Henry cut his teacher off, "Their shields! Given the shape of their hull and exposed armament, they must keep them powered twice as long or friction will tear them apart!"

The silence dragged on for half a minute, both men looking at each other like poker players, then Kilburn smiled, a rare occurrence that brought a thin smirk on Henry's face as well.

"And?" The teacher encouraged.

He knew the answer this time, however, and replied instantly, "They need bigger reactors or more propellant, which reduces the amount of supplies carried.

-Exactly. Which is why we do have stealth ships to re-supply high priority locations, we merely use the Valkyries when nothing else is available or stealth is not an option, which you should know by now." All trace of the man's smile was gone as he ordered his student to re-read the Dominion's list of space assets.

They would keep at it for a whole week before Henry was even allowed to leave the room.

000

00

0

Legs crossed in the hangar of the rusted up cargo vessel, the solitary human, his consciousness spread thin, almost to breaking point, blanketed the void between this galaxy and the next with his spirit, not touching or prodding anything, just passively listening to the echoes of civilisations dead long before his race rose to the stars.

Anhaka tip toed across the steel floor, dancing with the shadows as she approached the intruder.

This human had interrupted her pilgrimage to the Void, intruding on a sacred moment with his invasive meditation. He intrigued her.

She tried to sense his mind, taste his soul, but they were nothing like a Protoss' and further prodding would have alerted him to her presence. She almost wanted to make herself known, to talk with this unique being, but it would have been far too dangerous, especially to a young Dark Templar, cut off and inexperienced.

Humans, alone, were no match to a Protoss, of course, but they were fast and vicious… Not physically, but in their minds, they could change ideology and attitudes faster than a Protoss could read their minds, making them unpredictable at best.

Or so she had been told, and only from warriors who'd faced them in combat. This man carried no weapon, he wore no armor, clearly he would be no threat.

A discreet, almost timid poke at his vast consciousness caused it to wind up like a trap, folding back within the loner's mind before putting up a psychic wall between his inner thoughts and the outside world. It lasted only a fraction of second and the man merely opened his eyes, relaxed and in control, a far cry from the brutal reaction his spirit had exhibited.

"Welcome, Firstborn," he spoke, his eyes set ahead, far to Anhaka's right, "you have questions, yes?"

His mind remained sealed, how he could have recognized her race by their brief contact went beyond mere telepathy.

"You search the Void," she spoke, refraining from expressing her disbelief, "why?

-Same as you, young lady, I seek wisdom, new truths as well as ancient ones no longer valid…" He scratched his short grey beard, thoughtful, then added, "Not that these two can't be one and the same."

Nerazims knew cryptic, they excelled at it, but that made little sense to her, and she did not hide it.

The man's almond shaped and colored eyes sparked with humor as he replied, his tone professorial, "Of course, your truths are not mine, one does not simply take another's reality for himself…"

Anhaka cautiously stepped out of the shadows, alert to the slightest sign of danger, but he remained motionless, patiently waiting for her to ask her next question.

The Dark Templar thought of many formulations before finally expressing it plainly, "Who are you?" she asked, entering his field of view with as much care as one would show when first meeting a strange new animal.

"I've had many names over the years, most unremarkable, none of them would be known to you, so call me Temujin.

-Why Temujin?" She struggled with the word, not because of the strange accent or odd pronunciation, these were irrelevant to her, but because of its meaning, or its lack of it, at any rate.

"It was my most meaningful incarnation," Temujin shrugged, "the one life that would shape all the others, though it was not the first and I have no recollection of it."

Reincarnation. To the Protoss, this was a ridiculous thought, even for a Dark Templar, but she'd heard of it before, explained by traders and travelers of other species.

"You think you are this Temujin's reincarnation?"

His eyes lost their softness, thick brows twisting in a V shape as he spoke, "You can keep your skepticism, Protoss, because your truths don't apply to me doesn't make me wrong.

-You speak of truth as though there is more than one…" His frown lightened somewhat, but she could see his annoyance remained.

"Yes, it is a stigma our races bear, one that could be attributed to science and religion, but that would be unfair, for we are ultimately responsible of our own paths…" She thought about his words as he sought more to explain his point further. Could he be referencing to the relationship between Nerazim and Khalai? The Khala and the Void?

After almost a whole minute of silent meditation, his voice shook the hangar again, "Truth, reality, is a fluid thing, the laws of physics are immutable until they aren't, until one of us uses telekinesis or remote viewing, until you meet your twin sister and she's now a year older than you because of time dilatation.

Your friends, from Aiur, they join the Khala after death, become one with their ancestor, your people, the Nerazim, return to the Void, that's two afterlife for one race, don't you think there could be more?"

She thought of something to respond, but decided to keep quiet and let him talk.

"Now, if you want a more concrete definition of reincarnation, consider than Temujin was an above average psychic who's mind, after his body's death, managed to take over a weak mind, that of a newborn, for instance, and his memories simply couldn't fit in the yet unformed brain, leaving it with only the psychic's soul and powers…

-How would the child know it is the psychic's reincarnation, then?

-It wouldn't, not without some deep introspection and even then, he would only find fleeting impressions and shadows of his former self.

-Then, it's not really an afterlife, if they have no memories of their past life, it is more like an heritage, passing their powers down to the next generation.

-Perhaps, but consider this; we human can suffer from a disease called Alzheimer, makes us forget who we are, who our loved ones are, but passions and habits can remain, does that mean your mother isn't really herself anymore because of this disease? Does she become a hollow shell pretending to be human? Do not answer, there is no truth here, yours would be as valid as mine…" He got up slowly, disturbing a layer of dust that had settled over his lap and shoulders.

"This has been my quest," He explained, slowly walking over to a pile of luggage in the far end of the room, "over more lifetimes than you can conceive, a single, simple drive has pushed me forward. Perhaps there is a truth, one afterlife, a light in the darkness, a point where physics and her twitchy character have no hold…" He gave her a wolfish smile, "I'm looking for God, heaven, that which came before the big bang, the edge of the universe, in a sense.

-And when you find it?" That caused a giggle to escape his lips.

"I won't. There is no before the Big Bang, time didn't exist then, and the universe is constantly expending, it has no edge, as for God… Well, we are gods to ants, Protoss would have been Gods to medieval Earth, there is always a bigger fish. Even if I meet a being able to consume galaxies, it would only be a god by my standards…

-One man's truth does not apply to the next?" She understood the meaning of these words now. Zeratul would have loved this human… She was wondering how to convinced Temujin he should follow her to Shakuras when the man picked a large duffel bag from the pile and threw it over his shoulder.

"Precisely. Shall we go now? There is no more to be learned here and our quest is only begun."

She did not question that statement, merely following the intriguing being to where her shuttle had docked with his cargo vessel. Temujin abandoned his property without a second thought, as though it had always been its purpose to be abandoned, drifting in between galaxies for all of eternity.


	10. Gravity, not just a good idea

"What the hell is this?" Jackson looked at the paper-thin suit of armor with disdain, holding it away from his half-naked body as though it would try to swallow him if given a chance.

Kilburn smiled again. By then, Henry knew this man only smiled when he witnessed another living being's suffering. "CMC Light Combat Armor, unpowered, can be equipped for EVA…

-But why not just use Powered suits?" That one made no sense, why use this when they had armor that could turn men into tanks and compensate for any shortcoming on the wearer's part?

"You were down on Char for a time, right?" An odd question, but Kilburn never made his point outright, preferring to give his student a chance of figuring it out on his own.

"Yeah, a few hours more than I'd liked..." This was the first time in almost two weeks he'd even mentioned his short lived service for the Marine Corps. "Why?

-Then you have firsthand combat experience, list me three shortcomings of the CMC-300."

Jackson placed the light armor back in its vacuum-meant crate and thought back to that short dip in the fire. Power had been a major issue and was the first thing he could cite off the top of his head.

"Good…" Spoke his teacher, waiting for the other two.

"Then, I had trouble pulling the pin on grenades, so, I'd say they lack dexterity.

-Yes, anyone with functional eyes could see that. And?

-And…" What else was there? The suit had saved him from an encounter with a Zergling, protected him from the heat when it became unbearable and allowed him to carry sufficient firepower, so what else could he possibly hold against it?

"No idea, sir…"

Oddly enough, that did not trigger another shower of insults, something Kilburn had proved quite fond of. The contrast between Steel and Henry's new teacher had something humorous about it, when you thought about it; Steel was a crude man, a Marine with no education to speak of, yet never once cursed or repeated the same insult twice, as though he spent all his free time reading sociopathic poetry, whereas Kilburn simply lost it and blurted out whatever crossed his augmented mind.

This time, however, he simply nodded understandingly and walked up to an armor locker, the one where Henry's CMC suit was stored. Kilburne tapped the glowing icon at eye level and the locker split open in the middle, revealing the massive exoskeleton.

"On an open battlefield," He spoke, banging a fist against the thing's front, "where the objective is to hit hard and soak up punishment, that's the best we have, you'll likely find yourself back in it on a few occasions." They had just gone over that fact on the way down from the classroom to the armory. A few details remained unclear in Jackson's mind, but he understood the important part; Marines handled most all out fighting and defence, but Navy personnel also received combat training and many combat situations required them to get mud on their boots.

The Commodore had mentioned it earlier, but only as an offhanded remark, one Henry hadn't paid much attention to. What she had meant slowly became clear, however, as his instruction progressed and he learned more about his new job.

"But you're not rank and file anymore, when you get deployed on the field, it will be to recover or fix something, interrogate someone, investigate events not deserving of a Ghost operative, you need to be mobile and adaptive, your job is to recover information then act on it…" He closed the locker, his bald skull glowing orange as he leaned on the locker, the activation key flickering an inch overhead. "This suit is made for one thing; open warfare, for anything else, it's a liability: Takes too long to start up, takes too long to shut down, makes too much noise, leaves a massive footprint for detectors to pick up, cannot fit in most driver seats…

-I get it, too big, too clumsy, hasn't anyone tried to solve those issues?

-Why? Those 'Issues', as you call them, are what makes its strength."

Finally convinced, not that it was his call to begin with, Henry donned the light armor's bodysuit, slipping in by an opening in the front. The suit had not been made for overly muscular specimens and though Henry never thought of himself as particularly big, he still had some trouble getting the zipper closed and the suit felt tighter around the chest, neck and shoulder areas, though everything else fit nicely.

Most likely, this was due to Kilburn's new and brutal teaching methods, where every wrong answer cost Jackson ten push ups, incomplete answers a single traction and lack of answer ten of both.

The Marines had been more about cardio, requiring every recruit to run until they threw up before the day had even begun. Not much use for running aboard a spaceship, so the Navy focused on upper body strength and agility instead.

Today's training would normally be spread over a whole week, but time was a luxury which the Commodore had graced Kilburn with very little, so he would teach the kid extra-vehicular activities, basic engineering and proper jetpack operation in a single lesson.

Jackson slipped the chest plate and shoulder pads, all caught in a single piece, and fastened the straps under each shoulder. Gauntlets came next; boxy and filled with electronics, a pair of optic cables had to be plugged into the pauldrons for each and it took a moment for Henry to get find the right plugs. The boots posed no problem, but the helmet, an heavy and smelly full face block of armor, proved quite complicated:

A suction hose, sticking out the back like a ponytail, had to be secured to the air filters integrated to the suit's back and, of course, securing it required Jackson to reach back, plug the hose, hold it in place and push two clamps down simultaneously, except these clamps were, as the former Marine soon put it, 'Stiff as a corpse with a boner'. Eventually, he did succeed and took a moment to stretch his now numb arms. That caused both clamps to snap up and the tube wiggled free.

"F… Are you serious?" Kilburn, for someone in such a hurry, kept any trick or advice to himself, his own suit already on and secured.

Next time went much faster and Henry remembered to twist both clamps in 'Locked' position. Plugging the handful of optic cables proved rather easy in comparison and, at last, Jackson was ready to get thrown out the airlock.

He told his teacher as much and the man just nodded, as though this was a perfectly sound idea.

And they did just that, leaving through Bay 12, where they just stepped out of the force field and unto the ship's hull, though not before loading themselves down with tools ranging from handheld fusion cutters to paint spray can.

Jackson looked out at space for the first time in almost a month, but saw only the sun, which caused his visor to polarize and anything beyond that yellow disc became obscured.

Henry looked 'down', in relation to the ship's gravity. Char was over them, acting as a blood red sky, but he was not looking at it, he looked down and saw only the vastness of space. His first time ever in vacuum, sealed shut in this tiny bubble of safety, surrounded with nothing… Nothing at all, so hot and cold, so empty, a needle-sized hole in his suit could spell his doom within forty seconds.

And then, as if this were not enough, he looked down.

This primate, latched to the side of an overglorified rock, had not evolved to understand the void, he knew there was no falling in space, but the primate didn't and the only thing holding panic at bay was a remote-triggered stimpack injection from his teacher.

All this nonsense suddenly vanished. He didn't have time to be afraid, he had a job to do.

They did not use jet packs, not yet, and Kilburn had Jackson hop from a communication dish to a turret, then from the turret to a jammed airlock, two decks above Bay 12. The battlecruiser actually had a gravity of its own, though far weaker than the artificial environment generated inside. He bump against the hull almost at arm's length of the airlock and found himself floating steadily away from the cruiser, flailing pitifully as he drifted away in silence.

"Newton's first law, Jackson…" The humor in Kilburn's voice only worsened Henry's panic. The Stimpack had worn off and popping another one now would be dangerous. He'd have to deal this on his own.

"An object in motion stays in motion!" He yelled, somehow hoping Kilburn would help him if he got it right.

"Partial answer, Crewman!

-Unless acted on by something else! Grab me, grab me!" He was now two meters away from the hull, his flailing had spun him around and he now faced the sun.

Unless acted on by an outside force… When had he last heard that?

Space construction… Vehicle? SCVs! What about them?

Three meters now… He had stopped flailing around and focused on the yellow disc, along with his dwindling O2 reserve.

At first, SCVs had been plain walkers, but they suffered balance issues when drilling through thicker materials, their fusion torches sometimes burned hard enough to knock them over, so they had been outfitted with rear thrusters to counteract that momentum… Thrusters they now used to get around faster.

Which helped him… How?


	11. Stars and Stripes

**A/N: There! All fixed! Thank you everyone for all your loyalty and... Spamming of my inbox -_- So, my workplace... Exploded... So expect more updates from now on.**

**By the way, all view expressed by Temujin were written while I was totally not stoned (No, seriously, I don't do drugs, I just stick my head in buckets of hydrochlorine acid and... Just kidding.) So quit asking!**

The Protoss shuttle fell through space in silence, it's inhabitants unaffected by the vertiginous speed attained through riding Void currents.

Temujin ate protein slabs and recycled water, slept on the cold floor and spent the rest of his time reading or conversing with Anhaka.

The Nerazim needed no food or water, drawing sustenance from her shuttle's artificial illumination and ambient humidity, she focused on flying the shuttle and conversing with her strange passenger.

They spoke of the Dominion's ascension as well as the Confederacy's fall. The Zerg had been a determining factor of both, but to think this were the only factor would be naïve, according to Temujin, anyway.

He told her of ancient beliefs, paganism, pentagrams and spirits. The star, be it five or six branched, had always been seen as a gateway to the next world, every religion attributed great importance to it. The soviet union, under V.I. Lenin, had gone from a small and insignificant faction to one of the world's super-power in a matter of years, the beginning of their ascent marked by their adoption of the red star as their emblem. Every tank, every helmet, even the Kremlin, seat of their power, sported pentagrams, gateways to the other world.

Every great nation in Earth's history had stars in its emblem; The United States, Israel, China, North Korea… And those who did not usually displayed the sun, or a perversion of its symbol; England, the Nazi swastika, Japan's imperial flag…

"You really think your world's history was shaped by this spirit world?" Anhaka remained quite perplexed by her companion's world view. She could feel the Void, touch it, wield it, whereas this spirit world's influence was subtle, intangible and apparent only in retrospect.

"You are not listening." Spoke the Ghost, thick grey brows joining over dark eyes. "What I believe is not relevant here, if I told you this spirit world was truly a creature living in the Void and symbols allowed its powers to reach through time and space and empower whoever controls it, would you be so skeptical?"

She thought about it a moment and decided that no, she would not.

"Truth is subjective, my spirit world and your void might be two faces of the same thing and completely different as well, one does not simply know the truth, all who have tried ultimately failed, just as all these nations ultimately knew a swift end, as will the Dominion, if it follows their path." He let that prediction hang in the air, let it contrast with his previous words, "That is not absolute truth, I cannot tell you why it will tumble or when, but by knowing history, I know it is doomed to collapse as brutally and irremediably as any that came before it.

-Everything changes, that's the way it has been as far as history records, governments fall, ideologies change…

-Exactly!" Temujin's frown vanished, replaced by a rare smile, "Once you understand that, it is not that much of a stretch to conclude there is no truth, facts are such only so long as their determinants remain:

Water is a liquid only as long as it is at the right temperature, gasoline is only flammable in the right atmosphere, a year passes on earth while mere hours pass in the galactic core…

-Yes," She interrupted, now frowning herself, "but this can all be explained with physics, science…

-Ah… Science; the longest running quest for the absolute truth. Religions before it merely guessed and then twisted facts to fit their ideas, whereas science twists its ideas to fit facts…" He chewed on the corner of his bottom lip, eyes narrowed in concentration, and then spoke, somewhat uncertain, "Can you show me an atom?"

Anhaka looked around the single shuttle compartment, filled only with instruments, life support systems and personal hygiene implements. "I… Could…" She hesitated, "If I had the right equipment."

He raised a hand at eye level, "What is my hand made of?

-Atoms?" That earned her a disappointed glare.

"What are you? Dumb?" He poked at his flesh with the other hand, "It's made of skin, muscles and bones, meat. If you had a microscope, it would be made of cells, atoms, but you don't and until you do, it's meat."

That struck her as very close minded, especially from him, and she threaded carefully from there, "But you do know it's made of cells and atoms, right?" His smile returned and when he answered, she knew he was just making fun of her:

"What if I received a prosthetic?

-Now you're just silly."

Nodding, a smile still painted on his face, he sat on a deactivated probe and fetched a toothbrush from his travel pack.

"Fine, let me explain it another way; Science explains phenomenon and how to reproduce them by following strict rules. The rules don't affect reality, but by following them, you can understand, glimpse, how the universe works. And it does work, add hydrogen to sodium and you'll blow something up, but that's because whenever they're wrong, they change the rules until it all fits again. It's not an expression of truth, not even a reliable way of reaching it, it's merely an observation of facts, dismissing any claim that cannot be explained using their precious rules…

-Like the Void and Khala?"

He tucked the brush behind his ear, deciding there was hope for her yet, and exclaimed, once again cheerful, "Getting close, my dark friend!"

Oddly enough, she actually felt proud at this praise, a ridiculous thing for a four hundred years old being faced with one at most a quarter of her age.

"You can find obsolete truths all over history books, religious texts and science essays. Perhaps they were right in their time and things changed, perhaps they were wrong all along, maybe both, why not?" He spread his arm like some kind of prophet, "You, me, all those people out there, scuttling about their lives with such certainty and confidence that they are in control of their destiny, we're insects, flailing in the dark with our primitive brains, trying to understand a universe so vast I barely scratched the surface in a hundred lifetimes."

At that moment, Anhaka understood the scope of what she had before her, a being so ancient and wise Zeratul himself would be but a mere child in his eyes…

"Is it so unbelievable, so insane, to believe this world is far too complex for us to ever truly grasp?

-Yet you seek to comprehend it… Why?

-Heh, I'm here and it won't let me go no matter what, might as well spend my time finding out what makes it tick, perhaps find a way to be free or master of this eternal cycle.

-That is your goal? Universal domination?"

He laughed so hard the toothbrush was thrown across the shuttle.

"No! Ceiling Cat be my witness," She looked up; no cat, "I have no intention of ruling this mess, no, freedom or oblivion are my goal, either be free of death or make sure I will die forever."


	12. Operation: Ensuring Clusterfuck

The fusion cutter spat a silver flame, shaped as a teardrop and regular-edged, until Jackson cranked up the power output, depleting half the battery in four seconds of use. He held it near his midsection, over the center of gravity, to prevent spinning, and knew it had succeeded only after his suit smacked on the Minotaur's hull.

From there, he quickly grabbed a hold of a sensor dish and groaned as his arm twisted awkwardly, all his momentum transferred to the joints of his shoulder and elbow. Nothing cracked, the cutter stuttered and died and Henry retrieved his footing with a relieved sigh.

Kilburn soon joined him, his visor dark and emotionless. Both men stared at one another for a full minute when Kilburn's voice finally cut through the static of Jackson's helmet.

"No jokes this time, well done, kid." He patted the boy in the back and went back to work, "Commodore found a name for this bucket, I'll fix the door, you get the paint and scribble us something pretty on both flanks, questions?" With that, he typed something on his wrist terminal, activating Jackson's Zero-G propellers.

Two flaps the length of a school kid's ruler and four times as thick extended from the crewman's backpack while the heel of his boots split open to reveal sets of exhaust pipes. The Propellers were slaved to Henry's sense of balance and motor system, as Kilburn summarily explained, all Jackson had to do was focus on moving forward or backward and the suit would do the rest.

It might also be a good idea to keep an eye on fuel reserves, as they were not unlimited.

Jackson was about to go when something occurred to him, "What's the ship's name?

-Rubicon, named after…

-A famous river Cesar crossed when returning from exile, yeah, I know."

The teacher smiled under his helmet.

000

00

0

"He did that?" The Commodore had seen plenty of things in her life, more than enough so nothing surprised her anymore, but the news that Jackson had completed the hardest part of his formation already was… Unexpected. She usually did not like unexpected things.

"About four seconds after losing his grip." Kilburn confirmed, omitting to mention the hints he had given his student. Navarro-Jackson had already been quite knowledgeable before being sent to him; he had graduated from high-school with average grades and tried to complete degrees in many subjects before giving up. Had his parents been more present, or Henry more motivated, the kid would have been on track for a promising career in electronics, engineering or any such matter he chose. Laziness on both the boy and his family's part had killed that possibility.

Oh, Jackson's case was in no way unique, at least half the Marine Corps would have been prosperous citizens in other circumstances, only where most had turned to crime, he had turned directly to the Corps. Saved from the meat grinder for having hurled himself willingly at it.

"You recommend him for active duty?" The big question… With luck, Jackson would be strapped behind a desk or sent to engineering where his knowledge could be used and inexperience could not hurt, but if he ended up on the field… Well, the kid had already been on the field… What could go wrong?

Kilburn's enhanced mind calculated two hundred and forty six scenarios where Navarro-Jackson could cause over a hundred human deaths. "Absolutely. I forwarded mathematics, engineering and astrophysics instruction manuals to his quarter, if you give him reduced shifts and he's smart enough to use his free time on studies, he'll be on par with any actual sailor on this boat."

DuPont nodded and buried herself in paperwork without a second glance to the cyborg. She cursed, muttered inquiries only she understood and signed glorified handkerchiefs for almost ten minutes before he cleared his throat, "Am I dismissed, Commodore?

-Nope, you stay right where you are… I have… Aha!"

The file she handed him made no sense, not in context, but it reminded him of Navarro-Jackson's criticism of how Dominion Armed Forces used captured Valkyrie frigates.

"The DFS _Fury_… Prototype Voron-class light frigate, reverse engineered from Valkyrie-class…" He read aloud, "Stealth drives, latest defence matrix tech, increased troop carrying capacities at the cost of reduced firepower… Developed for discretely deploying mine fields and boarding parties…"

He'd heard of it, rumors and offhand remarks, mostly. A decent model, well suited for its purpose and certainly more manageable than a kilometer-long battlecruiser. "Why?"

"You're my best officer, Andrew, and I'm sending the _Fury _to track down Sarah Kerrigan. I need you on that ship.

-I'm no Captain, Hélène," He reminded her, "and you'd need a solid crew to sniff out Raynor…" His face twisted in a pained grimace as he looked for a way to express himself without being outright insubordinate, "I mean, you're recruiting marines to fill gaps in your own staff! And you're on top of the pecking order, what do you think they will stick me with?

-I know… Look, I know…" She banged the front of her skull against the trash-littered crate, heaving a long sigh before talking again, "This is a clusterfuck, Kilburn, I'm getting orders from three different sources and half the funding I'm supposed to, Mengsk is shooting whoever even looks at him funny. Anyone in his command staff with an ounce of common sense has had it blown out of their skulls one way or the other." Not pulling her forehead off the desk, she handed him three nearly identical copies of the same JAG article,"I've got the Ghost program, the Reaper Corps and Marine Recon trying to take over DNI."

He took the sheets. All three organizations demanded that DNI's resources be handed over to them…

"Why…" His eyes flew over the Ghost program's request and settle at the bottom, "Lord Admiral Nelligan was fired?" That man had been one of Mengsk's most loyal allies for years, even before the Dominion's foundation.

"Yeah, by a firing squad." The Commodore displayed no emotion, but Kilburn knew she'd been close friends with Nelligan. "I'm head of DNI now and I need to secure this shit before it gets out of hand." Finally leaving the crate, her wide green eyes dug deep in Andrew's only organic one, almost pleading, "I need your help on this."

Commodores, did not ask for help, much less ones as powerful as Hélène DuPont, and the cyborg could only mutter his agreement.

"Good," Breathed the Commodore, "I'll give you a month to put a crew together; full access to my ship's staff and resources, just get it done.

-Aye aye."


	13. Therapist

Life on a Battlecruiser is akin to that of a small town, as Henry would find out following his 'graduation', though everyone had a defined job and clear duties, many worked on the side as tattoo artists, musicians, even barbers, though the Navy had some of them already, only not as talented.

Any unused space aboard, be it hangar bays or dormitories, were filled with off duty sailors looking to lose or earn some credits. Gambling was forbidden aboard military vessels since long before mankind took to the stars, but there were many other ways spend time.

And you could always find a _friendly_ poker table...

Henry observed a game for a minute, but decided against it. He'd just received a month's wage, but felt no compulsion to just throw it away at the first chance. He only made his way through C-deck from the aft elevator, a whole section of the ship filled with off-duty marines and nurse, chatting, fighting drinking and yelling at one another.

There was nothing down there that attracted him, nothing worth his time, it seemed, so he just walked on, taking in the view of decay and decadence the Dominion Navy offered.

No… Not the Navy, many of the ruffians were marines, some Reapers… An armored corps tank driver snored lightly near a dozen piled up mason jars, right in Jackson's way.

He stepped over the sleeping man, his foot brushing against the precarious pyramid. His heart skipped a beat when the whole thing came crashing down and brutally shattered his train of thoughts. The sleeping man woke up yelling confusedly and grabbed Jackson's belt, apparently trying to pull him down and pull himself up.

Though he now wore Third Class Ensign pins, Henry's behavior had been hypnotically altered to make him a Marine. Without thought or pause, Jackson proceeded to beat the stupid out of his drunk companion, who soon sunk back into an alcohol and trauma induced coma.

"Fuck you!" Swore the young crewman, massaging his bloodied knuckles before resuming his walk.

Nobody took notice and if anyone did see him smack a superior officer's skull in, no one mentioned it to him. The corridor was rather narrow, but interrupted every ten paces by massive bulkheads and smaller hatches, all kept wide open and seeing more people through than a Dead Man's port whore. At least a hundred people had been within earshot of the one sided fight, half as many could easily have seen it from where they sat and two thirds of these were sober enough to realize the implications.

"Fekkin' disgraceful." Spat someone from a dark corner, tucked in between armament crates. The voice was familiar and Henry looked back, squinting to see who had talked.

A man, sharply dressed and exposing Death's Head division colors, stepped out in the harsh electric light. His bottom lip had been split open and now wore a thin scar on the right corner, mirrored by a pale line in his dark eyebrows, beyond that, Sergeant Jan Neeson looked just like the next guy.

"You're that kid from the dropship, huh? From Ulman's squad?"

Henry nodded, still trying to remember where he'd seen the sergeant before. His name, proudly displayed over a flock of battle ribbons, rang no bell whatsoever… Then, it clicked in the boy's mind, a little late, granted, but he had been in mildly traumatic state back then; that was the Reaper sergeant Ulman had spoken to in the dropship, the one who'd been so hostile.

He seemed oddly friendly as he encompassed the whole deck in a dismissive wave, "I did some back-check on you, when I saw you were in Ulman's team." His lips tightened and an eyebrow twitched, but there was no further display of emotion, "This isn't Bacchus, Jack, one word from me, and your career is done..."

There was more to come, but Henry didn't care for it that much, he grabbed Neeson's clean uniform collar and pushed him back in the corner, pinning the commando against the wall with a snarl. "You threatening me, you shit-stain? Think I'm that easy to scare? You're down here too, maybe I should re…"

Jackson smacked face first against the neo-steel wall, blood filling his mouth in a heartbeat, and he could feel something in his back crack when the Reaper punched him in the ribs twice.

He tried to kick himself off the wall and unto his attacker, but Neeson responded faster than Henry could register and threw the kid upside down against the opposite wall. At least the confused crewman reacted fast enough to not break his neck on the floor, though he did pop a shoulder in his fall.

Neeson pulled him back up without a single word, brushed dust off both his and Jackson's clothes and took a quick look at the damage he'd inflicted.

"This is what I'm talking about, _Hero_, you're out of your depths, just a fekkin' grunt dressed fancy, a trained monkey…" Henry kept quiet, eyes watering and cheeks burning in shame, not only over his crushing defeat, but also because, deep inside, he knew the sergeant to be right. His eyes never left the tip of his boots. "Listen to me, I sound like the bad guy from some teenage angst show…"

Expert hands settled on Henry's shoulder and, with a blinding flash of pain, Neeson popped it back in place. The kid yelped and just barely repressed the urge to give the Reaper another go.

"My point here is that you'd better get your act together, this isn't no side job for some shady bar, you're Dominion Intelligence now, you make a mistake, read a number wrong, and people die…" He nodded to the passed out tank driver, "You pull shit like that too often, get caught with rejects like this one time too many, and you're out of business, people who learned to trust you, your friends, end up with yet another spook in their headset, one they don't know as well, who'll make mistake and get your team killed…"

Confusion and shame danced a tense waltz in Henry's skull as he considered the Sergeant's words. "What team? I'm an analyst, I… Hell, I don't even have an assignment yet, what do you want from me?" Pleaded the young crewman, his eyes never meeting the Reaper's.

"Can't talk about that, let's just say I have a personal interest in you not screwing this up… You see, right now I have video footage of you committing violence on a superior officer, not only enough to end your career, but to send you in New Folsom for a little while.

-What do you want, then?" Snapped Jackson, his stomach suddenly filled with ice and shivers shooting up his spine. He had never thought just wandering around the ship could get him in trouble that way… He tried to think his way out of this, but pain radiating from his shoulder and back drowned any line of thought in blinding waves.

"It's real simple, you go back to your cabin, open these books of yours and make real sure you do your job right." A reasonable request, at first glance, but Henry would soon get an assignment and he had not been given a single day's rest since… Hell, before boot camp! A human being simply could not simply go one for half a year without a single day off… He told the Reaper that, but Neeson just sneered in apparent disgust.

"Then resign, you don't have what it takes to serve the Dominion." He stepped away, "Go back to daddy, he'll get you a nice job, won't he?

-Don't bring my father into this…" Jackson's eyes darted from his boots to drill into the Reaper's skull. Jan had done his homework; Kyle Navarro, owner of the Sierra Navarro casino on Bacchus, was one sick motherfucker with his own harem and his little personal dynasty. Henry was not top of the succession line, but, had he just played along, would have lived a wealthy and sheltered life in the shadow of his father.

Neeson hadn't found out why or when Jackson and Navarro grew to despise one another, but Henry had once told his father that if he or any of his men tried to contact him or his mother, Gabrielle Jackson, he would, and that was quite inspired, coming from a fourteen-years old, "Melt your skin with industrial acid, let you watch as gangrene chews through the rest and bring you to the hospital once it's settled in, so you don't just die outright."

Most people would just threaten to beat them with their own skull, extra points for imagery.

"That's right, who's going to keep him away from Gabrielle if you get locked in?" He'd obviously struck a sensitive nerve, now, he had to use it. "You didn't have the balls to be a Marine, you don't have the brains for DNI, you're a waste of the Dominion's resources, you'll just give up as soon as things get rough…" He discretely dropped back in a fighting stance, "You're no better than your father."

In twelve years of military service, Neeson had only met two being who could provide him a decent challenge; one had been a Protoss, the other a Ghost. Jackson had a long way to go if he wanted to be number three.

Neeson blocked his wide hook easily and threw a lightning quick jab at the kid's jaw, dazing him long enough to ready a finishing blow to the nose, which Henry side-stepped before attempting a sloppy arm lock. It did not work, but it forced Neeson to back away a second and allowed Jackson to throw another offensive, which ended with a boot in his stomach.

Now wheezing on his knees, Jackson once again felt shame burn its way through his face, top to bottom.

"Maybe one day you'll be good enough." The sergeant kneeled next to him, "But right now, get your ass in that cabin and start booking."

Jackson took a few wheezing breaths in and nodded, leaving C deck by the first elevator.

Neeson waited for him to be out of earshot, then made his way to a makeshift distillery, built inside an unused cantina.

"That'd be the third or fourth today?" Asked the man manning the illicit laboratory.

"Fifth.

-Well butter my biscuit, DuPont's one cruel lady, ain't she?"

The other man wore a baseball cap and had a cigarette stump stuck in the corner of his mouth. He handed Neeson a mason jar full of clear liquid, which the sergeant sampled once before leaning on the stainless counter.

"These kids need motivation, they're not brain-panned and we barely even pay them, DuPont's got the right idea; find what makes the troops tick, use it well and they'll follow you to hell and back.

-Nah, I mean she's got ya snoopin' around records all day, just to give some papered squids a spanking… You's a killer, Neeson, but she's got you babysittin'…

-I'm a psychologist, Bob, that's precisely what I'm trained to do.

-That's nonsense, you're Death's Head!

-That makes me an NCO in the meanest bunch of killers and psychopaths outside Raynor's Raiders; you think I can just yell these guys into submission?"

The other just shrugged and Jan threw a quick look at his data slate; John Higgs, a Sniper, hypno-trained to pilot an Interceptor, he still had a lot of simulated flight time to go before getting his wings, yet preferred to hang around his old squad.

The kid had not been exactly thrilled by his transfer to Naval forces, so it would be Neeson's job to make him get the fekk over himself and his ass in that simulator. A simple one; he would make it clear to the kid his squad was one man short, which allowed them some well-deserved R&R, but as soon as a new sniper was found, they would be sent right back into the meat grinder, and things looked real ugly down on the surface.

If Higgs were to re-join his team as a result of failing his pilot test, he would pretty much spell their (and his) death sentence.

With one last sip of the low grade Vodka, Neeson went back to work.


	14. First Time

No sooner was Henry out of the sick bay that the intercom, right next to the door, spat his name.

"Ensign Levinsky, Ensign Navarro-Jackson, Ensign Carter and Flight Lieutenant Melnik are requested in the CIC immediately…" It repeated itself twice with no change in intonation or variation of phrasing. An Adjutant.

Henry wanted to get himself a PDA from the quartermaster before sinking back into his books, but the voice said immediately and he decided against it.

The Combat Information Center of a Minotaur rested atop a short tower and could be accessed only by an elevator, in which he found himself crammed between Levinsky and Carter, both former marines, both built like gorillas. Flight Lieutenant Melnik, a Viking pilot who'd lost an eye and his nerve, also stood in the elevator with them, but was given plenty of space. Marines, Jackson first, help Viking pilot in very high regard. They cleared the skies of flyers then came crashing down with them in the mud, soaking up and brushing off what would have been killing blows to them before taking off again like avenging angels.

Henry had never seen a Viking in action, but the stories alone filled him with awe.

On top of the command tower was the CIC, AI core and Captain's private quarters, except not on the Rubicon, for Commodore DuPont slept in her office and used the same sand showers the crew did. The captain's quarters had thus been recycled as another command center for remote controlled units.

DuPont herself welcomed the four men on her bridge with nothing more than an off-handed "At ease. Eva?"

And the intercom buzzed to life once more as the Commodore leaned on a tactical map, taking notes on a paper pad.

"Welcome, gentlemen." The voice droned, causing the Marines to at the wall. Jackson and Melnik kept their eyes on the holographic map instead. "Dominion Naval Intelligence has temporarily assigned you to mechanised operations; your task will be to remotely operate a specific mechanical unit. Assignments are as follow:

Ensign Jonathan Levinsky, call sign _Leviathan_, assigned a lot of twelve Widow mines, sector nine.

Ensign Emile Carter, call sign _Mailman_, assigned a lot of four Predator-00 attack drones, sector eight.

Ensign Henry Navarro-Jackson, call sign _Hero_, assigned one ER-1 unit, sector nine.

Flight Lieutenant Nikolai Melnik, call sign _Maestro_, assigned one Raven support drone, sector ten.

Eradicator? Damn, these did not come cheap! Why couldn't he start easy, with the practically fully automated Predators or Widows, like Carter and Levinsky got?

He almost asked DuPont directly, but thought about it some more and understood some of the logic; a lot of the fleet was lost during that mess between Mengsk and his son, a lot of hardware was lost, and not just ship. AIs could be pumped out by the truckloads, whereas pilots for siege tanks and air superiority fighters had to be trained…

An Eradicator could take care of itself for the most part, the AI had been optimised so just about anyone with video game experience could handle the beast. Auto-repair, reloading, target acquisition and navigation were semi-automatized, requiring only that the operator push a button and that's why they picked a bunch of trainees for this job, as qualified personnel could be better used elsewhere.

Henry had been given a quick initiation to sentry bots and their operation both by hypno training and from his engineering manual, meaning he had the know-how to do the job, but strongly doubted he would be any good at it.

Not that it was his call in any event.

The four men crossed the CIC without exchanging a single word, a row of green LEDs on the floor guiding them step by step to the right bulkhead, like cattle being lead to the slaughterhouse.

It took them straight in the re-purposed cabin, the one DuPont should have been sleeping in, and any evidence it had once been a place to live was now buried under 3D screens, power cables, status reports and, where there should have been a bed, an holographic display of grids one alpha through ten theta floated, spinning lazily two feet off the ground.

Warfield wanted this plain secured, but could not spare the men, so it was up to the Navy.

Call signs flashed on four of the seven terminals, the other three already occupied, and Henry sat at the one marked _Hero_, finding himself in between Melnik and a M.U.L.E. Operator.

The ER-1 had not deployed yet and his first task would be to drive it in the drop pod.

First of all, however, Jackson ran a system diagnostic, as he had been taught to, though mostly as an excuse to get acquainted with the controls.

A joystick to the right controlled the robot's torso and weapons. He could look up and down with it or spin three-sixty degrees, though he did not try that in the confined space of Hangar bay six.

The terminal directly in front of the joystick relayed a crystal clear feed from the Eradicator's head camera, while its neighbor, to the left and locater behind another, barer joystick, displayed the 'bumber' camera, so the operator can see where he is going even when shooting at something in the opposite direction.

In between these was a simple keyboard and a black screen on which Henry could type complex instructions and receive diagnostic results. A tiny corner of that screen displayed an ER-1's outlines, completely green to show there were no damages to report.

Finally, Jackson slipped a thick set of earmuffs on and waited for the robot's audio and radio hardware to come online.

All systems popped on the black screen, all green, and a cacophony of static and people yelling instructions was relayed through the headset.

"Hero, online." He called as crew members steered clear of the massive robot's path.

"Easy, there, Hero," called a female voice in his ear, "less pressure on that joystick.

The black screen identified her as Sunder, a Petty Officer, her own robot, an A.R.E.S. towered over his as she deftly drove it in a pod. "Take your time, it's you're first time, don't feel bad if it takes a few tries to get it in." The malice in her voice caused him to look back at her pod, but it was sealed and even then, looking at the Warbot would not have helped him understand the meaning of that sentence.

He followed directions from an Adjutant; a little to the left, a bit to the right… A little further. All clear!

And he rammed the left cannon against the top corner of his pod's frame.

"Eva," He spoke, soothingly as the Adjutant announced a malfunction with the hangar's sensor array, "stop helping me, please?

-Understood, Hero, discontinuing assistance until otherwise instructed."

Sparks flew off the floor as hardened threads switched to reverse. Someone from the crew told him to ease up, but Jackson was done already by then, he modified his course a little and threw his Eradicator into the steel womb. The cannons were once again mistreated, but all systems remained green and the pod sealed shut without problems. A little counter in the black screen's top right corner told him he had a hundred seconds before drop.

Melnik frowned when he saw Henry get up from his seat and over to the Raven pilot's one. "You over the bone trench?" Asked the former Marine, somewhat sheepishly.

"Yeah," Melnik typed a few commands and bits of dead Zerg filled all three of his screens, "Sector ten, why?

-Can you see sector nine from there?" The man typed a few more commands and wiggled his joysticks,

Spinning the cameras around and toward the plateau, beyond the trench.

"Barely," he replied, though Jackson could see that already, "you don't trust the ComSat sweeps?

-I have the utmost confidence in our military's ability for screwing up."

The old pilot did not think him funny; with a glare and a nod, indicated to his younger fellow it was time to go hide elsewhere.

The Mule driver, a pale, freckled redhead with glasses thick as viewports, sent him a chat message the moment he returned to his place.

_Wall-E: Coming from DNI's new pet, that is hilarious xP_

He glanced over to his right, trying to catch the other pilot's eyes, but could only see the back of a terminal, which taught him something new; he could pull the screens forward so they encompassed him like a cockpit's canopy, or push them back against the wall. He pulled them to his sides, isolating himself in a little bubble of statics, status reports and computer imagery.

_Hero: I'm nobodys pet._

_Wall-E: Yes you are!_

He felt like back at school, when he and the other kids would bicker about Confederate Marines being better than light infantry or Ghosts or just about anyone else in the universe. It usually degraded into personal assaults, such as "You're dumb!" or "You're gay!" The last of which once earned him a humiliating response; "No, I'm not, and if I was I would not be insulted by it, that makes you both stupid and homophobic, and your argument is still stupid."

Imran Zerkeyev and Jackson had… Well, not ever been friends since, but they somehow remained in touch a decade and a half later.

_Hero: There a point to this?_

_Wall-E: This as in, this conversation, or as in, this whole operation?_

The countdown seemed to take forever; sixty seconds left, then thirty seconds to reach the surface… He could just ignore this 'Wall-E', but that would be like conceding the point…

_Hero: What do u want?_

_Wall-E: A million credits? How about you?_

He thought about answering something violent, like "Your spleen!" but decided against it.

_Hero: I jus wanna do my job right._

_Wall-E: Aw, isn't that a cute pet? :3 _

_Hero: Dafuq is your problem? _

_Wall-E: Dafuq? Now you're quoting some advanced literature, aren't you? _

The counter ran out and Henry closed the chat window. In thirty seconds, he would be driving a tank-sized robot in the middle of Zerg-infested terrain.


End file.
